Kishori Turner and Karishma Cordero. Yuri Hasegawa/CBS
The Amazing Race season 36 contestants Kishori Turner and Karishma Cordero struggled with their final roadblock.
Karishma, 22, volunteered to perform the challenge due to her skateboarding experience. However, when the roadblock turned out to involve building a skateboard rather than riding one, she knew she was in trouble.
“It took her over four hours to complete the challenge, but [the episode edit] makes it look like we were super close to [competitors] Derek and Shelisa [Williams], and we were not,” Kishori, 26, exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, April 11, one day after the cousins were eliminated from the CBS series.
Per the rules of TAR, Kishori had to sit on the sidelines without helping Karishma as she struggled to remove a bolt that was stuck in the skateboard.
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“I’m very type-A, I’m very detail-oriented, and so having to sit there and be super patient and not allowed to say anything was really difficult,” Kishori said. She added that, in hindsight, she and Karishma wished they’d known the roadblock was a building challenge.
“I love building furniture. I built my bookshelf, my nightstand, my dresser, all of it,” Kishori said.
During their time on the reality competition series, Karishma and Kishori spoke often about honoring Karishma’s parents, who both passed away from cancer. Although Kishori thinks her late aunt and uncle would be “proud” of their accomplishments on TAR, she also knows they would’ve laughed at their mistakes.
“[They would] 100 percent [be] laughing at us,” Kishori said, noting that they would’ve been particularly tickled by Karishma’s inability to build a skateboard.
“That is probably what they would be cracking up at because [they’d be like], ‘Our girl rides skateboards,’” she said.
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Kishori lived with Karishma’s family for six months during her freshman year of high school, so she views her aunt and uncle as her “second parents.” She and Karishma are more like sisters than cousins, and their relationship has evolved as they’ve gotten older.
“[Karishma] is quite a few years younger than me. I’m 26, she’s 22. And when you’re younger, that age gap is a really large age gap. When I was in high school, she was in middle school, I taught her how to shave her legs, she was stealing my makeup, all those things,” Kishori said. “I think as we’ve gotten older, that bond has gotten closer because we like similar things and we go on trips together.”
After navigating stressful situations with Karishma on TAR, Kishori said she learned lessons about communicating that she’s applied to other relationships in her life.
“Just being understanding, being patient, being gentle with your loved ones,” she said. “And I’m just thinking about my aunt and uncle as well, live your life to the fullest and live every day as if it’s your last breath because you just really don’t know. I think it’s so important to live a life of adventure and spontaneity, and just living with joy is so important. I think we embodied that spirit on the race. … I think we were portrayed a little bit as chaotic, but I think chaotic in a good way.”
The Amazing Race airs Wednesdays on CBS at 9:30 p.m. ET.
