Behind the scenes at NZ's Next Top Model (+pics)

Congratulations: you are in the running to becoming New Zealand's Next Top Model. A report from the show's auditions in Wellington and Palmerston North.

"This is killing me," declares Anna Lynch. Andrea Plowright checks her pulse and delivers the bad news. "You're OK. You're alive. This is your reality."

Reality television, that is.

Day two of the North Island leg of New Zealand's Next Top Model search and the judges have seen just one too many teenagers with eyebrows as skinny as her jeans.

"Who did that to you?" demands Plowright. "They should be sued."

But there's no time to waste. Another minute, another blonde-brunette-redhead-weren't-you-here-yesterday?

There is no air in this room, the fluorescent lights are brutal and the parade of wannabe supermodels stretches to the street at the Travelodge, Palmerston North.

Melanie: "I had cancer three years ago - if you get through that, you want to try other things."

Ariana: "My son is everything, but I wanted something extra."

Emma: "I can eat anything I want to and not put on a kilogram."

It's official. Everybody hates Emma.

Cydney Goodwin-Jones, 17, is a slim and pretty African-American with passports for three countries. Why are models skinny, the judges ask her.

"I don't know maybe they're not happy with themselves?"

The panel burps a noise like a game show buzzer. Nyah. "Stock size," says Colin Mathura-Jeffree. "It's simply about stock sizes. They must be able to fit into the clothes."

Palmerston North today, Wellington yesterday. At the Circa Theatre, pretty girls lolled like a post-Christmas sale Barbie doll display.

Pania Henare, 19, was there with her mum and her boyfriend. "I feel quite short next to you," says Tyler Simpson, her partner of 18 months. "I told her this morning, `You're going to get through, sweetie'." Why? "Cos she's so beautiful." Initially, she gets the thanks but no thanks speech. Then the judges have a change of heart.

"I was quite gutted," says Henare. "Then they called me back, and said they wanted to put me through, but I'd be plus-size." Henare is more than 180 centimetres tall and wearing a size 12. "I'm never eating again!"

*****

The original Next Top Model show is 11 seasons old. Created by ex-model Tyra Banks, the format has been sold into more than 35 countries. In Australia, it's hosted by Kiwi Charlotte Dawson.

Locally, that job goes to Sara Tetro, a former model who formed her own model and celebrity management business 14 years ago.

"At no point am I trying to be Tyra," Tetro told the Star-Times last year. "She comes straight from a photo shoot. I come from a boardroom."

But Tetro was braving storms in Fiji last week, and the task of making the first cut from the country's hopefuls fell to the show's producer, Lynch, model booker Plowright and, the only audition judge who will also feature on the show, international model Mathura-Jeffree.

The team have already canvassed the South Island. Timaru women had green eyes. Nelson women had clear skin. In Invercargill, long limbs were the order of the day. But really, there is no single look.

Applicants range from the stick thin to the gently curved. The most successful have already got their hair off their face. Their clothes range from the simple skinny jeans, shorts, and slim skirts with plain tank tops to the truly individual.

Some are pretty, some are stunning and some are there because their mothers made them. They all get the same treatment.

It works like this: wannabes remove their shoes and are measured to check they're 170cm or taller. They fill in a form (five dreams or goals, food allergies, criminal convictions, internet home pages, etc). And then they wait. And wait.

In Wellington, some queued for four hours before they were called to stand on a white X taped to the floor and answer questions: What do you love about yourself? What does being a model mean to you? When do your braces come off?

Felicity Jansonius, 20, ate strawberries and crackers with pate for breakfast. She is studying religion. "I think it's relevant in today's climate. It's the deepest, most important thing to someone."

The judges don't think she's a top model contender but they hand her a yellow slip with contact details for the Miss New Zealand pageant. "Why not," she says. "I like to meet new people."

Olivia's tattoo represents her two-year-old niece who has a hole in her heart. Sophia is a vegan but she'd wear a fur coat on a modelling job.

"My personal beliefs are my personal beliefs. I'm not going to be like 'oooh, you're eating meat in front of me'."

Rose is six-foot-something, of Samoan and Chinese heritage, from Porirua. How did she prepare for this? "I did a prayer that I'd make it." But she doesn't.

Dozens and dozens of girls come and go and the waiting room is starting to smell like a pretty school camp: bare feet mixed with nervous sweat and fresh shampoo.

The radio sponsors hype them up with sugar-free energy drinks and pop quizzes.

It's Marty's birthday. "Happy Birthday to you," they sing. They don't know that it will also be Marty's birthday in Napier, Rotorua, et al.

A tall woman with a head scarf fronts up to the panel. Her dreams include developing a sex education programme appropriate to the youth of today. Her school, she says, tried to scare students into abstinence.

"My first boyfriend sexually abused me ... most of my friends have kids and they're just 21 ..."

Lynch tells her she is not going through to the next round. "You are an amazing, strong young woman. I think you'll go far."

A pregnant woman doesn't get through. A woman with cystic fibrosis does. Word comes to the judges that a young man wants to apply - no problem, except he's missed the 3pm deadline.

It's 5pm, and, of the 150 women who front up in Wellington, 15 have gone forward for a video interview and photographs.

One of those is Lucy Galbraith, 21 a slip of a blonde with great cheekbones, French Connection boots, a ripped denim skirt and a thin leather belt. She wants to be a painter, "realism, contemporary modernism..."

She's like to work behind the camera. "This is my flatmate, she can tell you how many Vogues I've got. Like, five million thousand. Special editions from Italy that cost $30."

When the judges sent her upstairs for photos, "I was like, photos, why? Is there food?"

It was, she says, "a funny little audition". And then she heads to Te Papa to view the colossal squid.

And still they come.

Britney is told she looks like former Miss Universe Lorraine Downes: "Who's she?" Hannah is told she looks like actor Jessica Alba: "I hate being compared to celebrities. They're like, totally perfect, and you're like this slightly munted version."

Back in the media seats, the girls from Cleo Magazine are perilously close to missing a flight back to Auckland. "It's like watching The Girls of the Playboy Mansion," one confesses. "You know you shouldn't, but..."

*****

Reality television: it's a train wreck with a happy ending. No start dates have been announced, but when the TV3 show screens, just 13 women will compete for the top prize they'll be culled from a list of 33, selected on the basis of the video interviews made on the road.

In Palmerston North, five of the 60 hopefuls go through to this stage.

Kirsty O'Neill is a blonde pixie in a retro dress and her grandmother's locket. She works part-time in the New World deli. This morning, she applied foundation, Thin Lizzy powder and mascara. Mathura-Jeffree has taken wet wipes to the lot.

"I just can't get over that I have no make-up on my face," says the 17-year-old. "I know, that sounds, like, so superficial ..."

By the end of the day, Mathura-Jeffree will have filled almost half a wastepaper basket with tissues. It's like watching butterflies being born.

"I feel like I'm liberating a country," says the Auckland-born model who was spotted in the 1990s and went on to major success in India.

"Two of the girls cried today when I took their make-up off. They feel vulnerable ..."

Mathura-Jefree says the biggest mistake from potential entrants is trying to second-guess the judges.

 "They try to reflect what they think we want to hear, as opposed to being honest about who they are. I really need to know who they are."

Outside the audition room, entrants speculate on just how mean the judges might be. In fact, they're behaving more like older siblings than judge and jury. They give out contacts for the stunt industry, promotional modelling and broadcasting.

 "You'd make a killing as a real estate agent in Auckland," they tell one woman. When an identical twin turns down an opportunity for the next round because it would mean missing her sister's wedding, they commend her: "You've made the right decision".

In the Manawatu, Tamara Ransom, an 18-year-old pharmacy worker from Dannievirke, is the first to make the cut. She can't believe it. "Modelling has definitely been something I've always been interested in. Coming from a small town, there's not much opportunity."

How would she hack it in world perceived by many to be shallow, bitchy, cut-throat?

"I don't like mean people," she admits. "I'm too nice." And then she's swapping numbers with Kawerau's Alex Tioki, the third girl through this morning.

Tioki looks a million bucks. Her entire outfit cost $75. She's home from Perth, where she applied for the Australian show but was told by Charlotte Dawson to try out here, "because I was a Kiwi".

How does she feel about the possibility of living in a house with 12 highly competitive women. "I don't mind. I grew up around all that. Bitchiness ... it's just the same old, same old. I come from a small town and that's what girls do. I was sort of the weird girl who got picked on. Tall, lanky, fashion, fashion, fashion."

Oh yeah, laughs Tioki, "I have suffered for my fashion look at these shoes." She swaps her black and white patent heels for the jandals hiding in her mum's bag. She is, after all, just sixteen.

* New Zealand's Next Top Model screens on TV3 later this year.

- © Fairfax NZ News