We caught up with Nigel Barker, the handsome judge on America’s Next Top Model, before Pamella Roland’s spring 2010 show to get the scoop on the petite season of the hit model search competition.
“They’re doing very well,” he says. “It’s an idea that Tyra had been working on for years. The reality is that Twiggy was 5’5” and we always reference Kate Moss. The whole idea around America’s Next Top Model, from Tyra’s perspective, is she was turned down by five agencies initially when she went out looking, and agencies would say, you haven’t got the look, your forehead is too big, we already have a black model , blah, blah, blah, and she says, look, there are girls out there in this world who have a chance to make a difference in this industry or at least a part of it, and I want to create America’s Next Top Model to find these girls. And she didn’t want to shut the door on them because they’re below 5’7”, when there’s evidence that you could (be a model at that height).
“So, here we are and it’s been really successful. As you can see, at the auditions we had over 10,000 people show up for this last season and we had riots and what have you. So, just because you’re small doesn’t mean you can’t be rambunctious.”
Barker says it’s a particularly pretty group, these petites.
“I think, partly, it’s because you have a larger gene pool to pull from,” he says. “And I think they’re feistier because they’ve been thrown away so many times. This is their opportunity, so they came fighting for this position.”
“I’ve been doing this 13 seasons now and it was one of my favorites,” he says. “And I don’t know why – it felt fresh, it felt new. Maybe because it was a petite season, but we had so much fun and it felt very different.”
Barker says, financially, tho, it was a difficult time.
“Budgets were being cut across the board at CBS and all of the networks because of the recession and despite any of that, I think we produced a fantastic show,” he says. “It has the same old laughs and hi-jinks of season two or season three.”
His favorite? Well, he can’t say, but when told Miss J. Alexander had named Laura as a standout, he did comment.
“Miss J. has Tourettes,” he says. “I love Laura, too, but I’m partial to Southern belles – I married one.”
– Lesley Kennedy
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