Interview: Trey & Lexi talk ‘The Amazing Race’

In an “Amazing Race” season lacking any one dominant team, dating couple Trey Wier and Lexi Beerman briefly looked like they were in position to take control.
From the sixth Leg to eleventh Leg, the former University of Texas football player and his former cheerleader girlfriend never finished lower than third and picked up three wins (most for any team this season) and a pair of second place finishes.
Then, continuing that momentum in the finale, Trey & Lexi completed a pair of tasks in the lead and reached the season’s last challenge with an advantage. The matching of flags and local greetings left Lexi frustrated and stymied, as Team Longhorn slipped from front of the pack to third at the closing Pit Stop. Despite the setback, Trey & Lexi were still enthusiastic at the mat, with Lexi making the latest in a running-gag string of not-really-hints for Trey to make her an honest woman.
Lexi made another of her marriage jokes in the couple’s exit interview, which also covers the intense last task, their close friendship with two of the other racing teams and the money-finding incident with James & Abba, an event that also featured in yesterday’s exit interview with Natalie & Nadiya
Click through for the full conversation.
HitFix: So you guys won three Legs this season, the most of any team on the Race. Even though you didn’t win, can you take some solace in that?
Lexi Beerman: Can we take any what?
HitFix: Solace. [It’s entirely possible there were audio issues. Let’s not jump to any conclusions.] Is there any satisfaction you can get from that?
Lexi: Oh my gosh, huge! We won the most Legs out of anybody on the Race. That, in itself, was a huge accomplishment. We won three incredible trips, one of which will probably be our honeymoon.
Trey Wier: Hi-yo!
Lexi: [Laughing] It’s so exciting. I can’t even express the feeling of jumping on the mat. I’ve been a fan of “Amazing Race” since I was 13, which is about 10 years, which is crazy to think about. But getting on that mat and Phil telling us that we’re No. 1 three times was definitely one of the most rewarding things about the Race, for sure.
Trey: We watched every episode together and we’d always see teams come in first and we waited til the day we got to try-out and we finally got called on the show and now that’s us up there, standing there getting told we won a trip. So it’s incredible. We loved it. We’re so incredibly blessed.
HitFix: I see that the “getting married” jokes continue. Is that a thing that you guys did before the Race or has that just become more and more of a thing since the Race?
Lexi: A little bit of both. Coming from myself, I’m still waiting. But it is a family joke of how many times it gets brought up [she laughs through a couple words]
HitFix: And Trey, is this a joke that you find amusing?
Trey: I mean… I think Lexi’s just ready to take on the next step of our relationship and get married. It’s a little funny, everybody asking every single episode if this is going to be the one that I propose to her or when it’s gonna happen. But when the time’s right, it’ll happen. We’re still young!
HitFix: Going back to being the team that won the most Legs this season, what do you think it says about the nature of “The Amazing Race” that you guys won all of those Legs and the team that won the million only won the last Leg?
Lexi: That’s the crazy thing about “Amazing Race.” At any point, it’s anyone’s game. You can’t get comfortable. Even when we won three times, you just have to keep proving yourself each Leg, because no one’s safe at any time. This season of all, two teams missed flights. A big part of the Race is skill, but a huge part of it is luck and you can’t sit comfortably ever. They got lucky with that last challenge. I mean, they performed it correctly. Unfortunately, it wasn’t our time and I truly believe that everything is meant to be, so I kinda have to sit happy in that thought.
HitFix: Let’s talk a bit about that final challenge, which seemed to be very stressful for everybody. Lexi, could you give your insight into what made it so stressful and how it was able to stretch out for as long as it did?
Lexi: The whole thing lasted about three-and-a-half hours. I think that’s how long it took even the Beekmans to get it. When we arrived to the challenge, Trey and I had about a 15 minute lead on everybody. When I walked up to the challenge, saw that it was languages and not flags — I thought it was gonna be that we just had to rearrange the flags in order of when we went there, that was our guess walking up to the challenge — when I realized that I had to translate each country, it was a little overwhelming. The trickiest part, for me, of the whole challenge was that if I had “Hello” right, but “Good-Bye” wrong, I just got a big “X.” There was no, like, “You’re ‘Hello’ is right and you’re ‘Good-Bye’ is wrong.” So at any point in time, I think I had “Hello” right in about five countries, but I kept second-guessing myself, because I kept getting them wrong. The mental side of it, just watching Josh get country after country after country and me still struggling with three of them, it kinda gets to you a little bit and the pressure starts to rise. I think when the flag thing came down and hit me on the head, that was kinda when I just lost it. The whole Race is so intense and so high emotion and I think there’s just so much pressure leading up to getting on that final mat and it’s unfortunate that we didn’t win, but we had the most amazing experience and we just feel so very lucky to have been chosen for sure.
HitFix: And Trey, what was it like having to Lexi go through that and having to stand there and being entirely unable to help?
Trey: Having to watch Lexi struggle in that flag challenge was so tough. I love her more than anything in the world and when she’s hurting, I’m hurting. I wanted to run over there and see if I could help her in any way possible, but I couldn’t. I just had to stand there and let her do what she had to do. It was so hard and we were both emotional. We’d done so well for the whole Race. We were in the top of the pack always and for it to come down to that last challenge, it was really tough on both of us. I couldn’t be any more proud of her. She is the biggest competitor and I love her more than anything. I wouldn’t change it for the world. We did what we did and I’m so proud of us.
HitFix: Many viewers were surprised by the amount of teamwork that went on this season and how that was different from most previous “Race” seasons. Were you guys surprised by how close you got to some of the teams out there?
Lexi: To be perfectly honest? No. At the beginning, when we met all the teams, you kinda just get a good kinda read on people, just on how they talked with us and their character. We immediately hit it off with Natalie & Nadiya. The very first Leg, we got to know each other just talking in the airport before we left for Shanghai and we just hit it off with them. They’re 25 and we’re 23, so our ages definitely helped us cling to each other and then, also, they’re very well traveled. They grew up in Sri Lanka and we had never traveled, so they kinda took us under their wing and taught us the ropes of how to travel in airports. We didn’t even know what customs was. We were like wide-eyed puppies the whole Race and they helped us kinda ground ourselves and we’re so forever thankful for that. And the Chippendales too, just good people. That’s what we surrounded ourselves by the whole Race, just good solid people that were true and I think it really benefitted us throughout the whole Race and I think that’s something unique that we brought to the Race that wasn’t even intentional and now our friendships are stronger than ever. We still talk to them pretty much every week and it’s awesome. It’s a really, really special bond that we have with those two teams, for sure.
HitFix: But that also led to other teams like Abbie & Ryan accusing you of following and not necessarily knowing what you were doing out there. But was that part of your strategy out there? Getting other teams to help you with the things you didn’t know how to do as well?
Trey: When you create an alliance, you create friendships. When you struggle, if they’re around, they’re gonna be there to help you, just like we were there to help the Chippendales or Natalie & Nadiya whenever we could. We all wanted us to make the Final 3. We called ourselves the Dream Team, because that’s who we wanted to race against in the end. We wanted to help each other get there. If someone had a little trouble and we were around to help, we would gladly lend a hand. Same with the Chippendales and same with Natalie & Nadiya. We all wanted us to be there in the end.
Lexi: That’s just part of an alliance, for sure. I think that honestly maybe there was a little jealousy on Abbie & Ryan’s part, because we placed in the Top 3 in the vast majority of the 12 Legs. You can say that we hung onto people or whatever, but you’ve gotta do what you gotta do to win. You can say that we were following or we were latching onto people, but obviously our strategy worked better than theirs at the end of the day.
HitFix: There was a downside as well, though. What did you think when you watched the situation with the Rockers’ money play out on TV?
Lexi: Unfortunately that was shown very differently than we thought it was going to be on TV. Unfortunately, CBS kinda promoted stealing and there was no stealing involved. If anyone is a fan of “Amazing Race,” they know that stealing is highly illegal. We can’t even touch another team’s bag without getting in trouble. Unfortunately, that came across poorly. But it’s a Race. We found money on the ground, or Natalie & Nadiya did, and we decided to split it and there honestly is no guilt. If we would have stole — which we would never do, Trey and I are not those kinds of people and we have good morals — but we found money on the ground and we honestly didn’t even know it was for sure Abba & James’ and it just came across a little differently on television than it actually happened.
HitFix: And my normal last question: Given all of the things you experienced for the first time on the Race, what was your favorite part of this experience that we DIDN’T get to see on TV?
Lexi: Oooh. Good question. Oooh.
Trey: I think something for me is that Lexi and I never did a lot of traveling, but now every time we get on a plane, it’s gonna bring back memories of us rushing to the front of the line or rushing to get off the plane as fast as you can… I think that’s something that I’ll take away from it: Every time we get on a plane, every time we go on a trip, it’s going to bring back those memories of racing around the world, racing to the front of the line to get on the plane, racing to get off. It’s small things like that are going to put a smile on our faces and take us back, for sure.
Lexi: I think one of the main things is in our downtime at the airports waiting for our next flights and getting to know peoples’ backgrounds, like the Lumberjacks — Lumberjack and Jill — they were the first ones off the Race and I wish America got to know them more. They’re the most sincere couple and we got to know them on the flight headed over to China. It’s the relationships and the friendships and getting to know people during the downtimes of the Race. It’s “The Amazing Race” and it’s “The Amazing Wait,” we called it, because there’s a lot of time in airports and stuff like that. So it was incredible just to get to know different people. It’s 12 teams and they come from all different backgrounds and I don’t think that Trey and I have ever been in such a diverse group of people. You had the Monster Truckers and the Lumberjacks and Will & Gary and Abbie & Ryan and the Chippendales, who completely broke the stereotype of what America and us thought they would be like. It was just a blessing to get to know people and hang out with people during the downtime. A show behind the scenes of “Amazing Race” would be just as entertaining as the actual Race itself.
×