The 5 craziest revelations from the documentary “The Swan: Behind the Mirror”

The swan stands out as an unambiguous low point of the early era of exploitative reality television.

Shown on Fox in 2004, the Fremantle Media-produced series traveled the country looking for women willing to do something about their self-esteem issues. But in each of its two seasons, The swan candidates signed up for mandatory sessions with a therapist, the real transformations were all superficial – and often left lasting scars.

Former candidates interviewed for Hulu’s The Swan: Behind the Mirror said diets could be limited to as little as 1,200 calories a week, plastic surgeries prescribed were sometimes so extreme as to prove almost debilitating, and grueling fitness programs were sometimes forced upon them just days after going under the knife.

“It could have been a great story. But it turned into a nightmarish reality,” said season 2 contestant Dore Weber.

The following are five of the biggest bombs dropped Behind the mirrorfrom the ‘worst moment’ of a producer’s career, to the surprising details of his diet and allegations of shocking behind-the-scenes negligence.

No control

Surgery is the aspect of The swan which most viewers remember only too well. Tummy tucks, facelifts, brutal plating procedures, liposuction, rhinoplasty, breast augmentation – nothing was off the table, except perhaps the candidates’ ability to say no.

“I would say the women had maybe one percent say in the procedures they followed. Very, very little,” recalls Jenna Baker, a producer credited during her time on the show as Jenna Hovland. Contestants had 90 days between the start of production and the reveal of their new look, meaning they had to lose a lot of weight, undergo extreme cosmetic surgery, and recover enough to compete in a pageant, wearing a dress and heels in just three months.

Tawnya Perrotta, who competed in Season 1 as Tawnya Cooke, said she believed her refusal to engage in certain procedures cost her a spot in the final competition. “Some girls told me, ‘I didn’t think you could say no.’ I said, ‘It’s your body.’

One of Perrotta’s season 1 costars, Cindy Ingle, underwent rhinoplasty, breast augmentation and liposuction, due to which she suffered both costly and painful complications years later. “I didn’t feel like I could say no. I don’t want that. Or not that much. I trusted them and let them do it,” she said.

“I haven’t had sex for a week”

Many careful examinations have been carried out on The swanthe surgical program of. But for the women who endured the competition, the diet and exercise regimens were just as exhausting.

Beth Lay, a season 1 contestant, said on Behind the mirror that host Nely Galán “put us on a 1,200-calorie-a-day diet. Good old Jenny Craig.” According to the Food and Drug Administration, women ages 31 to 50 who engage in moderate physical activity have a recommended daily calorie intake of 2,000, while women in the same bracket engage in intense workout routines like competitors in The swan should consume 2,200.

Ingle, one of the few alumni interviewed without saying anything negative about the show, praised Jenny Craig’s meals for being “prepared. Take them out of the freezer, put them in the microwave. Either way, it’s easy, easy.” But Season 1’s Kristy Garza criticized the diet as tasting “of bad decisions and regrets. So many of us haven’t done it for a week.”

Behind the mirror contains dozens of clips from episodes of The swanincluding a scene from Season 1 that shows Galán telling contestant Dawn Goad, “If you don’t change your eating habits, you’re going to be a bathtub when you get home.” » And the pain didn’t stop there.

Kelly Alemi, who won the first season of The swanstated that before his interview for Behind the mirrorshe was “trying to find out how long after my surgery we started going back to the gym.” The detailed calendar she kept at the time simply stated “pain, pain, pain, pain” in the days following her procedures. Speaking about clips of herself working out while still wrapped in facial bandages, Garza recalls: “My face was burning. It felt like someone had a hairdryer on your face, very close.”

Plastic surgeon Dr. Randal Haworth, who consulted with the candidates, recommended their surgeries and performed some of them, noted: “We have instructions that we give as plastic surgeons, what they can and can’t do (after surgery). I knew they had to exercise. But I can’t control stupidity or stubbornness.”

“Take ugly girls and make them hot”

Many women interviewed for Behind the mirror reflected on what motivated them to sign up for an experience that, in the rearview mirror, now seems completely barbaric.

“I was dealing with a lot of emotional baggage at the time and needed a change,” Lay explained. Alemi remembers going “to this casting call. This line is filled with all these girls. I had been in a shitty relationship with someone who really ruined my self-esteem…I felt bad about myself at that time.” In a clip from the pilot episode, Alemi tells the camera: “I would never think that anyone would look at me and think I’m pretty.”

Garza remembers the audition producers asking him, “Tell us your story, why do you want to participate?” The swan?’ So I just told them. I come from a broken home, dad wasn’t there. It impacted me growing up in a home with a single mother. I left home when I was 17, and all of a sudden I was going to join the military. The next thing I knew, I was having my daughter, and my breasts just didn’t survive. After pouring his heart out, Garza said he was asked, “Could you show us?” “I just put it all out there… So I’m pretty sure they were like, ‘Oh, she’s going to make good TV.’

Julee Margulies Metz, producer of the season 2 segment, recalled: “The original concept of The swan as I was told, transforming women’s lives. Women who were in difficulty, who felt that they were not enough, that they needed something.

But Baker and lead producer Carl Buehl remember a slightly different speech. They pointed to Mark Darnell, Fox’s former head of alternative programming, as the main force behind the series, reinforcing its risky elements. “Mike came in and said, ‘We need to make this a big event. We have to have a beauty pageant,” Baker recalled. When Buehl was asked what Darnell was aiming for, he replied, “He wanted to, you know. It’s like, ‘We’re going to take ugly girls and make them sexy.'”

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“Basically, we took care of ourselves”

Former candidates interviewed on Behind the mirror offered conflicting accounts about Galán, Haworth, and the show’s producers. But they also denounce shocking negligence on the part of the series’ medical staff, responsible for their post-surgical care.

“I had forgotten how bruised and swollen I was,” Lay recalled. “I was in such a drugged state that I honestly don’t remember how much pain I was in.” Perrotta, who refused some of the recommended procedures, said she was “seeing someone after his surgery and didn’t really know who he was, because he was so bandaged up. He was walking across the parking lot to get to his apartment…and I was thinking, ‘Who the hell is that?’

Haworth praised the show for doing “a really good job of trying to show the ‘warts and all’ process – the bruising and so on and so forth. And some of the swans had difficulty with subsequent care.” Alemi was one of them. “We had about a day of follow-up and we were taken to our rooms. I knew I was swollen…I knew my boobs were huge, I knew my butt and my legs hurt because they had done so much lipo. And it was leaking, leaking lipo,” she explained.

According to Alemi, the candidates “didn’t have anyone to help us change our bedding.” Ingle added, “We basically took care of ourselves. We had two traveling nurses, and then that was reduced to one. And she had to talk to about 20 girls. So we can see her twice a day, we can only see her once.”

“The worst moment of my career”

The horror stories don’t just belong to the candidates. Baker described producing a Season 2 script as “the worst time of my career.”

“We were filming with a swan. She ended up getting nasal cancer. They discovered it while they were doing plastic surgery. The production team was stunned by the diagnosis because of the storyline,” Baker said. She then explained how the contestant in question, Patti Chedohan, had seen her husband die of cancer and would now face her own battle with the disease.

“I had to question her and ask her: ‘I was afraid she would leave…’