Greenbelter Tai Lowry took part in a wild ride across Europe for the NBC reality show Destination X, hosted by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Ten contestants were selected to live, eat and sleep on a bus with blacked out windows and move around to destinations unknown. Their challenge was to figure out where they were by solving clues. One by one they would be eliminated if their guesses were too far away from where they really were.
The atmosphere was electric at Greenbelt Cinema as the attendees of the private premiere party watched the first episode of the show. The show itself was tense and well-paced, and the clues were tricky and clever. It was exciting to see the realization bloom across Lowry’s face when she figured out exactly where they were. Then, on screen, Morgan intoned, “The player that dropped their X furthest away from the destination is …” ‒ cut to commercial, and everyone in the theater screamed.
Lowry was chosen from around 200 hopefuls to be on the show, after being cold cast. “I received a DM [direct message] from the producer, and I thought it was a hoax. But it was real!” At Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Lowry was voted Most Spirited. She attended Frostburg University and Stetson University College of Law in Florida, as well as a semester abroad in Tokyo through Temple University, before working as a prosecuting attorney in Prince George’s County. After a brief marriage, she realized, “I can reclaim my life. I don’t have anyone else to consult with. If I want to see the world, I can make that happen!” She moved to New York and became a flight attendant.
Her career experience as a prosecutor ‒ being able to detect if people are being truthful and to see into their motivations ‒ is not so different from her job as a flight attendant, where her situational awareness, resourcefulness and calm responses under pressure help her to ensure the safety of a plane full of passengers. Her ability to work with different teams as flight crews change was also very helpful on the show, as groups and allegiances challenged cast members to work together while still competing against one another. She prepared for the show by making notes at the library, watching movies that would teach her about Europe, studying pop culture, and playing games at Board and Brew like Geo Guesser and other trivia, dexterity and brain games. She also prepared physically by doing weights and cardio. The show was challenging because the contestants would be led blindfolded through a lot of varied terrain, and on the bus they never saw the sun.
Lowry gave credit to her mother for always encouraging her to follow her dreams, beginning in childhood when she was her Scout leader and dance mom. Lowry plans to build on her experience on social media, including a podcast based on her father’s career as an NFL player for the Washington team and for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1970s. She also feels “the reality show is a great community to be a part of, and I’m hoping this leads to more television opportunities.” However, she is not leaving law entirely behind, but moving into real estate and property law.
The biggest thing that Lowry learned from her experience was even greater confidence in her own abilities: “By playing the game and by opening myself to this experience, it taught me how much I was holding myself back, by not putting myself out there, by being afraid of being judged. Now I have a reinvigorated sense of self-confidence. That little voice of self-criticism ‒ that voice is gone now!”
