‘Top Model’ Casting Goes Smoothly, but Isn’t Free of Tears
About 1,200 women auditioned for “America’s Next Top Model” at a hotel in Midtown. The maximum height for contestants this time is 5 feet 7 inches.
By Cara Buckley
Hundreds of young women subjected themselves to certain heartbreak early Saturday in Midtown Manhattan, rising before dawn to line up, primp and be scrutinized and summarily rejected by the judges for “America’s Next Top Model,” the reality show.
At least this time there was no near riot. This weekend’s casting in New York was a do-over after things went terribly wrong four weeks ago, when a car overheated and began smoking in front of hundreds of aspiring models. They had been waiting along a jammed sidewalk outside the Park Central Hotel and were frightened en masse after seeing the smoke and fearing an explosion was next. Barricades were toppled, people were knocked over, arrests were made and the casting was called off.
Saturday’s casting, at the Pennsylvania Hotel on Seventh Avenue, saw no such drama - the police arranged barricades along West 33rd Street to contain the line in a snakelike fashion. Yet the orderliness of the proceedings did little to lessen the sting of defeat.
“We were a little shellshocked, a little hurt,” said Jenny Whoa, who lined up at 6:15 a.m. and was rejected by a judge almost as soon as she was herded into the judging room with dozens of other women (Tyra Banks, the show’s host, head judge and executive producer, was not in attendance). Ms. Whoa lives in Brooklyn and is diminutive by modeling industry standards, but tried out because the height limit for the show’s next installation is 5-foot-7. At 27, though, Ms. Whoa is at the upper age limit for contestants (the minimum age is 18). “It was,” she said, “my first and last chance, all in one swoop.”
The doors opened at 6 a.m. Women of all shapes and sizes arrived from the five boroughs and beyond: supermarket cashiers, store clerks, Federal Express employees, students, dropouts, all eager, even desperate, to be plucked from their regular lives and transformed into fodder for the reality television mill.
The height limit was ignored by a handful of statuesque women, including Mecca Aaron, who lives in Downtown Brooklyn and is 6-foot-3. “I’m hoping to be the exception,” said Ms. Aaron, 25, who said it was her fourth time trying out.
Shakiesha Watson, who is 18 and five feet tall, took a train from Trenton before dawn and had not bothered going to sleep Friday night. Alana Smith, 19, arrived in the city at dawn after taking an overnight bus from Toronto with her boyfriend. They had arrived in Toronto on a cheap flight from California: Ms. Smith, who is 5-foot-5, had always wanted to model, but had missed the show’s auditions out West.
Once the women got inside the hotel, their bags were searched, their bodies were traced with security wands and they were handed numbered stickers. They were directed up an escalator - the eager faces going up starkly contrasted by the defeated visages coming down - and into a vast, fluorescent-bathed holding room filled with 1,500 metal folding chairs. The room was never full; by midday Saturday an estimated 1,200 women had come through. Ultimately, 13 finalists from auditions in several cities will make it to the show.
The women were seated in groups of two dozen or so, and it was then that the jitters really set in. Sneakers and socks were replaced with stilettos, strapped on with trembling fingers. Mirrors were whipped out, lips were daubed with gloss and the last errant hairs were patted down. Nervous giggles often swept the groups, which, moments later, would be led into a curtained-off area for their reckoning.
Shortly before 9 a.m., one young woman was plucked from a group and escorted out, her mouth twisted in protest as a security guard led her by the elbow to the door. A spokesman for the CW, the television network that produces the show, said she was a “repeat offender” - she had already been rejected but rejoined the line in the hopes of catching the eye of a different judge.
More often than not, the young women emerged from the judging rooms with long faces and teary, red-rimmed eyes. It proved nearly impossible to find anyone who had made it to the next round (the statuesque Ms. Aaron was also rejected).
“It doesn’t discourage me,” said Tela Williams, who is 18 and had gotten up at 3:45 a.m. to journey to Midtown from North Brunswick, N.J., after she emerged, rejected, from the Pennsylvania Hotel. “At the end of the day you’re beautiful to someone.” Then she popped open her umbrella and disappeared into the rain and crowds of New York.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/nyregion/12models.html?hp