'The judges have reached a decision; one of you is about to be a star in a matter of minutes. Your life is going to change.' With those words, model turned television producer Tyra Banks proclaimed Adrianne Curry, now 22, 'America's Next Top Model'. The audience cheered, the judges beamed, contestants cried and Curry exclaimed, 'I want to have a good life now. My family's going to have a good life. A lot is going to change. And it kicks so much ass!' But does it?
'I have it on good authority that the winner isn't a millionaire [and] Tyra is tooting her own trumpet a bit,' says runner-up and jobbing model Elyse Sewell, also 22.
Nobody likes to come second, but anyone who watched the show's Cycle One (as the first series is called) will know Sewell has always spoken her mind. She admits to having been constantly 'chewed out' for having an attitude.
Sewell is posing for the Hong Kong press on the balcony of Cafe Costa in Lane Crawford in Central's IFC Mall on a sunny afternoon. She is helping to promote the forthcoming Cycle Three of America's Next Top Model for TVB. Among the other celebrities on show are Sharon Chan Mun-tsi, Mandy Cho Man-lei, Eddie Lee, Charles Szeto Shui-ki, Winnie Shum Wing-ting, Lokyi Lai and Miss Hong Kong 2004 runner-up, Fu Sze-sze.
Christina Tse, the station's assistant publicity manager, says Sewell is attending the event because she is based in Hong Kong. Tse admits to having tried but failed to secure Curry to promote the third series. 'Her modelling base is the United States,' she explains of the winner's reluctance to come to Hong Kong. After the celebrity poses, reporters and groupies dive in for personal snapshots using mobile phone cameras, which are immediately sent to friends. Sewell obligingly flicks a V-for-victory sign while posing with one admirer, but accompanies it with a semi-embarrassed smile. 'I thought it was a stereotype before I came here,' she confides a little later, referring to the Asian penchant for making the sign in photographs. It's certainly not something taught at the Tyra Banks school for up-and-coming celebrity models. 'What the show purports to teach us isn't applicable to real life,' says Sewell.
The US show takes 12 homegrown girls and attempts to turn them into professional models under the 24-hour gaze of television cameras in their shared New York loft apartment. Described on the official website as a 'highly accelerated modelling boot-camp', the girls are expected to demonstrate both inner and outer beauty as they master complicated catwalk struts, intense physical fitness, fashion photo shoots and publicity skills. It's a gruelling regimen.