ANTM's Angelea Preston talks about her disqualification and more
"This one moment has been following me for a decade." @angelea_preston speaks to @arya_roshanian about her unceremonious #ANTM disqualification and everything that came next. https://t.co/JwIYtUrzUi
- Bustle (@bustle) March 31, 2022
Angelea Preston, the original winner of ANTM's All-Stars speaks out about her disqualification, the way the show's producers tarnished her image, and how this affected her.
To refresh y'alls memories, Angelea was supposed to win the show, but then she was stripped from her crown after the producers learned she had been working as an escort. The crown then went to diaper-wearing extraordinaire, Lisa D'Amato. Angelea said that the producers well were aware of this but did not care until she won the title.
OP's NOTE: It's a very good article and I reccomend people try to take the time to read it fully, but you can find a summary under the cut.
“I screamed. I just could not believe it was me,” she tells Bustle. “I almost ran off the set. I was like ‘Are you serious?!,’ breaking the fourth wall and looking in the camera.” // “I hugged the other girls, but at the same time I was like, ‘Bye, y’all! Peace out! Y’all can go! I just won, and my life is about to start!’” This was Angelea's third time on the show after having been part of seasons 12 and 14.
But fans have never seen Preston’s victory. After producers learned that she’d briefly worked as an escort, her title as America’s Next Top Model - and all the prizes that came with it - were taken away. In the finale that aired on television, host Tyra Banks and her fellow judges informed viewers that Preston had been disqualified under “unusual circumstances,” and another model, Lisa D’Amato, was named the season’s victor instead. “They made me feel like I’d be a failure for the rest of my life,” Preston says.
“When you Google my name, the words ‘disqualified’ or ‘escort’ pop up,” she says. “It annoys me sometimes. This one moment has been following me for a decade, and people really want to know what happened.”
Preston spent all her money on a bus to New York City for the second round of casting. She slept in a bathroom stall at the Port Authority Bus Terminal for two nights, something that became part of her narrative on the show. Despite making it to the on-camera portion in Las Vegas, she didn’t make it into the Top Model house, where contestants live during the competition. She says an argument with another contestant made producers worry that she couldn’t control her temper. She was told by the producers to seek out anger management training and try auditioning again. Two seasons later, Angelea made the cut.
This second time around, the producers pulled her aside to say they felt her new outlook was too serene, she says, and that she’d need to amp up the drama if she wanted to stick around. “Basically, they said I’d go home if I wasn’t giving them good TV,” Preston recalls now. “I started to realize what this Top Model game was about. It’s about staying on the show as long as you possibly can by playing the game.”
In 2010 she moved to New York City in hopes of becoming a model, but whenever she'd go to agencies and show them her Top Model portfolio, they could scoff at her and rejected her. Preston believes this might have been due to the stigma around the show and casting agents seeing the ANTM girls as reality stars and not models. It also didn't help that her on-air edit made her appear volatile and difficult to get along with.
Post ther first two appereances in ANTM, Preston became desperate for work.
One day, while walking down Jamaica Avenue in Queens, a stranger pulled up beside her in a luxury car. He introduced himself as T* and asked Preston if she was a model. She described him as “super attractive,” and they exchanged phone numbers. However, during their early conversations, she felt something was off. She remembers feeling like she was being recruited for something unrelated to modeling. “I straight up asked him if he was a pimp, and he was like, ‘Are you a ho?’ And I was like ‘What? No!’” she says now. “But it all felt kind of playful. I was very naïve.”
T told Preston to come meet two of his friends, both of whom went on “dates” in exchange for money and luxury goods. The women she met were, as Preston remembers, “very beautiful.” One had a designer dog in a Louis Vuitton bag. Both had their hair and nails impeccably done, and wore designer shoes and Rolex watches. They told Preston that all she had to do was go on dates to reap the same benefits; there was no sex involved. “It was too good to be true, but I still went along with it,” she says.
T flew her and the two other women to North Carolina, where they were supposed to go to a strip club in order to find their "dates". Angelea felt uncomfortable with this and told them she was dealing with mentrual cramps in order to not go with them. After this, Preston realized she had made a mistake. Not many people knew where she was, she lied about why she was on a trip, and she had no money to fly back to NYC.
After this, Angelea describes
[TW: DOMESTIC ABUSE]being in a car with T and his cousin. She refused to engage in sexual activities in exchange for money, which in turn had T ask his cousin to get out of the car right before punching her, breaking the sunglasses she had on. Preston alleges T assaulted multiple times, which is why it took her so long to leave since she didn't know how to advocate for herself and felt like she deserved it.
Article mentions the modeling industry fails at offering resources and protections for working models. “The industry is largely unregulated, but the other big problem, and I would say an even bigger problem, is that there really aren’t labor unions or a strong notion of workers’ protections available within the industry at all,” says Anne Elizabeth Moore, the author of Threadbare: Clothes, Sex & Trafficking. “[There’s this idea] that you’re lucky to be a model so that people who start thinking about or advocating for their rights are shamed into silencing themselves almost immediately.” Please note that Angelea does not personally describes her experience as human trafficking.
After a while, some of Angelea's friends tried to intervene and get her away from T. While in Vegas, they alerted Krista White (ANTM S14 Winner) of what was happening. At first she didn't believe what the friends were saying, thinking Angelea was working in real estate in Miami, until someone kept insisting she tried to go and get Angelea back. She first arranged for to pick up Angelea at the Palms Casino resort, but when Angelea called and cancelled, Krista realized what was happening. The next time Krista planned to meet Angelea, T was with her.
Both Angelea and Krista sat with in her car while on the phone with Angelea's sister, crying and trying to get Angelea to walk away and leave T. They offered to pay for a ticker to go back home, but Angelea refused, adamant to returning to T. After a while, White ended up dropping off Angelea back in the hotel. “I wasn’t ready to leave with Krista when she tried,” Preston says. “I was very delusional, but I wanted to be with him.”
After being unable to help Angelea, White reached out to everyone she knew in order to help her out. She even went as far to contact Top Model, allegedly calling, emailing, and sending Facebook messages to multiple people associated with the show, such as stylists, Banks’ assistant, and even Banks herself. A few people responded and offered to do what they could. As far as White knows, no one ever took any action to help Preston.
“And for Tyra to be like, ‘I’m for women, I’m for girls, I want to have your back.’ When it came time for her to show up and really help someone, what happened?”
Preston was able to escape about a month later when the possee traveled to Long Island. T had made it a point to keep Angelea away from New York since he knew she had friends there that would be able to help her. After T dropped her off at an hotel and left her alone, Angelea called a friend who was able to help her get her bags and get out of there. Preston saw T one more time and told him she was done working for him, though she did say he tried to convince her to stay. Says part of her wanted to go back with him because she was infatuated with him.
After that, she was contacted by a producer to ask if she'd be interested in returning for another season of ANTM. She flew to LA to meet with the producers and says the show's talent manager Michlle Mock immediately brought up her stint as an escort. In court documents, Preston would later allege that Mock asked questions like, “What have you been doing to get money?” “Were you being pimped?” and “Were you doing anything illegal?”
Angelea was surprised since she didn't know who Krista had contacted.Says this made her realize that ANTM higher ups did know what was happening with her and did nothing to aid her. Preston ended up denying being an escort since she feared runing her chances of coming back to the show. Angelea says Mock knew what had happened but said nothing, keeping this as a secret between them.
During the filming of the show, Angelea was approached by Mock and other members of the production who asked her to be honest with them about her past since she was set to win the season and they wanted to protect her.
She met with some other higher ups to discuss sponsorships, but then was informed that after a few minutes of small talk, that Banks and executive producer Ken Mok were revoking her title as the All Stars winner. The season would still air, but she would not appear as the victor. All signs of Preston’s win would be scrubbed clean. Angelea cried after this since she was hoping the prizes would her turn her life in poverty around.
Various people insulted her, asking her if she was sleeping with her friend so he'd let her stay with her. The worse was when Wong (CW's attorney) told her that she had no one to blame but herself and she had done this to herself. After their last meeting, the producers asked het to fly back to LA so they could reshoot the finale with a different winner, but she didn't pick up.
When the finale came ou, people barely cared about Lisa winning and were more concerned about knowing what had happened to Angelea but no one from the show came out with a statement.
In 2014, she brought a legal claim against Banks, Silva, Mok, The CW, and other entities involved with the show. According to the complaint, in addition to alleging that she’d been the rightful winner, Preston also alleged that contestants had been paid less than minimum wage, had been denied rest breaks, had been prohibited from speaking for periods up to six hours, and had been denied food and water for hours at a time. In one instance, it alleges they weren’t given food from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. - and only then after a contestant complained. Further, the suit alleges that Preston experienced a panic attack while filming, and was denied medical care for 10 minutes “so as to make for better television.”
Three and a half years after filing the suit, Preston dropped the claim in 2018. “I realized I wasn’t going to win,” Preston says. “I didn’t get any money from it. The only good thing that happened [was that] people knew I was the winner.”
At this point, the only thing Preston wants from Banks and Mok is an acknowledgement that they messed up by revoking her crown. She also thinks their actions enforced the message that sex work is immoral.
After leaving the show, Preston got her bachelor's degree, which she earned summa cum laude, and now works as a Sunday's host for NPR's WBFO and is also in the process of writing a memoir, which will include more details about her stint in ANTM and her time with T.
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