Amazing Race Ryan Ferguson

Amazing Race Ryan Ferguson

Ryan Ferguson, the Amazing Race Season 33 Finalist, Set to Receive $38 Million for Nearly Two Decades of Wrongful Conviction. 

If you’ve never met Ryan Ferguson, his Instagram bio says it all: “10 years of life wasted, shaping every day of it.”

Ferguson, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and released in 2013, has made it a point to live every day to the fullest.

“I... know, almost for certain, that if you hadn’t had the trial, a lot of the facts would probably still be hidden,” he told Erin Moriarty in a 2013 interview.

Moriarty, who has covered his story from the beginning, caught up with Ferguson to talk about his latest adventure: competing on “The Amazing Race.”

Ferguson recalls when he was contacted by a casting director on Instagram.

“I thought it was a joke. I was like, ‘I’m really not going to make it on that race, okay,’” he told Moriarty on a Zoom call. “I Googled it, and it was actually real, and I was just like, ‘Okay, yeah, I’ll check it out and talk to them.’”   

The 33rd season of the show, which returned after a long hiatus, had first started filming in 2020 but then the coronavirus pandemic shut down production.

“I thought, ‘Okay, this is going to be over in a month.’ Little did we know, a month later, two months later, the whole world was shut down,” he said. “We were surprised that it was paused for 19 months.”

When he returned to filming, he told host and producer Phil Keoghan, “I’m used to being shut down. I just went straight to jail life.”

In addition to working a lot of jobs, he went to school and got his pilot’s license. Ferguson told Moriarty that he couldn’t just sit around being upset about being shut down — especially when the rest of the world was also shut down.

“I had to take advantage of the opportunity to do something positive with my life,” he said. “And going back to the race helped.”

Ferguson says racing with his dad was “the best thing ever.”

“I figured it would be me and my dad and we’d do a lot of these trips together,” he said. “You know, he’s a little bit older and can’t really keep up.”

On the show, Ferguson is joined by his best friend, Dusty Harris, and he says it’s been an amazing race around the world with Harris. Of course, it’s a competition, which he admits can get less than ideal.

“I’m just like, ‘Okay, I’ve been through a lot of these stressful environments before, and I know how to help my fellow teammate,’” he told Moriarty. “And so, all of those things just kind of came naturally to me.”

He says the biggest takeaway from doing “The Amazing Race” is being persistent — and growing.

“Dusty and I, we went through some tough times,” he said. “We messed up a lot… but the thing is, we never got mad at each other.”

“That’s what life is about, and you’ve got to keep going — no matter what.”

Not forgetting his experiences with the criminal justice system, Ferguson has remained active in the discussion — appearing in MTV’s 2016 documentary “Unlocking the Truth,” which highlighted other possible wrongful convictions.

He also recently started a new podcast called “Jail Count,” aimed at taking a look at the American justice system, including interviews with former inmates.

“I wanted to create this opportunity for them — a platform where they could speak, they could talk about their truths, and humanize them. Because people need to see that a lot of these individuals are coming back into the real world, and they need our help.”

Amazing Race Ryan Ferguson