ABC, Mondays Beginning Jan. 5
What do you get when you combine the producing talents of Tyra Banks (America’s Next Top Model), Ashton Kutcher (Punk’d) and Denise Cramsey (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition)? A can’t-turn-away reality series with some drop-dead gorgeous contestants, a major Joe Schmo Show-type of reveal and a character study on human behavior.
When producers for True Beauty set out to find America’s Most Beautiful Person, there was no shortage of ego — over 1,000 applicants from across the nation applied to the casting call. They reduced the list to just 10 — six women and four men from all walks of life.
“The premise of the show is we’ve taken these 10 beautiful people and brought them out to Los Angeles under the guise that they are competing in an external beauty show — competing based on their looks to be America’s Most Beautiful Person,” says Cramsey. “But that’s just half the story. What is also going on is that we are testing their inner beauty to see who is the most beautiful both inside and out. It’s wildly revealing because we hold a mirror up to these people and say, ‘This is how you behave in your lives,’ and they are forced to confront that.”
Contestants believe they are being judged solely on their looks and how they fare in competitions. Each episode finds the contestants competing in an outer beauty and inner beauty challenge.
“The outer beauty challenges are challenges that you would expect — photo shoots, modeling, fashion shots, style competitions; there’s one that’s a physical fitness competition. Any way you could think to assess outer/physical beauty is what the outer beauty challenges entail,” Cramsey shares. “The inner beauty challenges are more, sort of, morality questions. If you were put in this situation, what would you do? What is the right thing to do, and what would you do?”
The contestants don’t know they are being filmed and judged on these split-second morality challenges. Cramsey’s convinced that the scenarios these contestants are put in will certainly fuel debates among viewers at home.
“This is going to ignite sofa debates. By that I mean, a husband and wife sitting and watching together and a husband says, ‘I would never do that,’ and she says, ‘Really? I think I might do that in this situation.’ That’s what is interesting to viewers, to see these morality questions come up and see how you yourself would answer them.”
Serving as host and judge is Vanessa Minnillo (Entertainment Tonight), along with judges Cheryl Tiegs (former supermodel) and Nole Marin (America’s Next Top Model). The winner of the competition will receive a cash prize and will be featured in People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People issue. One contestant will be eliminated each week and at that time they will be shown their reactions to their inner beauty challenges.
“We really had the full gamut of reactions from remorse to embarrassment to ‘Yeah, well that’s who I am.’ It was a big range of reactions when they were confronted with their own behavior,” Cramsey says. “That’s really the most interesting thing in the show, to see when they are called on this stuff and how they react.”
But it’s the ugly in every reality show that provides the laughs, conflict and storylines.
“As you can imagine, the reality show contestant is a big personality who believes that they should be a star, so all the stuff that comes with that kind of narcissism you see on our show,” Cramsey says. “On a lot of reality shows, you’re kind of rewarded for bad behavior because you become the bad character that everyone loves to hate. So if you’re the nasty person on the typical reality series, you’re the one that everyone talks about and you’re the one that gets the most attention. Well, on our show it’s not OK to behave like that, but the contestants don’t know that. So that’s what is so interesting — to see that this is a new kind of reality show where the people who behave the most badly do not become the stars. They become the ones who go home.”
© 2008 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. Credit: Mike Ruiz