Melinda and Erika Papadeas could have faced a hefty punishment for using taxis during the Bulgaria leg of The Amazing Race if they hadn’t come in last place.
“We would’ve had a 30-minute penalty for each taxi ride,” Melinda, 66, exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, April 24, following her and her daughter’s elimination from the competition series.
In the Wednesday, April 23, episode, Erika, 32, misread their clue, which barred them from taking taxis while traveling in Sofia. Instead, the client engagement specialist thought it said they could only travel via taxi during the leg. While navigating the city, the mother-daughter duo took multiple cars to get around.
“So it would’ve been about two hours,” Erika told Us.
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Throughout the episode, Melinda and Erika had no idea they had broken the rule. It wasn’t until host Phil Keoghan told them when they were last to arrive on the mat. Erika explained that the interaction was more “comical” than viewers got to see.
“[Phil] was like, ‘You guys misread it. I’m sure it was like a team thing.’ And my mom goes, ‘Oh, I’ve never read a clue,’” Erika recalled. “I was like, ‘Thank you.’”
Erika explained that her mom struggles with poor eyesight and couldn’t physically read it. After Keoghan, 57, called out the mistake, Erika told the host that she read it but misinterpreted it.
“When he said that, I was like, ‘No, I read the clue.’ And he was like, ‘But did you?’” she said. “And I was like, so we need to clarify this. It’s not read your clue, it’s read your clue correctly. Because I totally read the clue. I just didn’t read it correctly.”
Looking back on what happened, Erika explained that “a couple things” played into what went wrong with the clue situation.
“I would always rip and read and then while I was reading, my mom would just start bolting in like pretty much any direction she wanted to go,” she told Us. “And so I would read and run to catch up.”
Melinda noted that despite being one of the oldest people on season 37, she wanted to make sure she was keeping up with the other contestants.
“I didn’t always like being the oldest and the slowest and the last and I’m competitive, so it was hard,” the administrator told Us. “So I kind of would jump the gun a little bit or just wanna get going and it added pressure on [Erika] … but I think she did an incredible job guiding us and directing us.”
Erika added that an error in the first leg when they mistakenly didn’t take a taxi ended up contributing to their last leg.
“The first thing is the very first leg of the race. It’s so ironic actually. When we went to find Phil, it said to take a taxi, but I didn’t read the clue and I made my mom run about two miles to find Phil,” she said. “So it’s ironic that on the last leg of the race, I was like, well, ‘Let’s take a taxi.’”
The Amazing Race airs on CBS Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. ET and is available to stream on Paramount+ the next day.
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