You are of age at 18 years old. You are underage for that. And anyone who is a minor has not been able to apply for a GNTM for a few years. So Heidi Klum can no longer ask a 16-year-old for a nude shoot. GNTM is now running for 18 seasons and Heidi Klum is proud of herself, she sees herself as a revolutionary, what exactly?
At most of Miss Germany elections, ex-GNTM judge Armin Morbach says in the NDR documentary “Pressure, hate, manipulation: how does Germany’s next top model break?”. And: “It’s not about the winner at all, it’s just about the show. And it’s about Heidi.” The circus, the animals and their trainer. Tell us something new, Armin. By the way, he no longer considers nude photo shoots to be contemporary. And his former colleague Peyman Amin says that in the real modeling world there is no must for nude shoots. Only with Heidi they are still mandatory.
“Today I’m happy to not only question the ideal of beauty, but actually abolish it,” Heidi Klum once said and also that everyone preaches diversity and only she realizes it. Heidi can use what she learned in the sensitivity crash course. Only: what exactly happens in GNTM? Besides the show? Behind the curtain? In Heidi’s bank account?
The NDR documentary format “STRG_F” asked 100 former participants and 50 employees of GNTM, more than half spoke confidentially, nine candidates and two ex-jurors stepped in front of the camera, all others were afraid of being sued by Pro7 or the position.
The film also shows archive material, it feels like it dates back to the 15th century. You see jury member Rolf Scheider spontaneously sticking his tongue down a candidate’s throat in 2014, and you hear sentences like: “You are not the woman for life, you’re her wife for the night.” There was blatant sexism from Heidi, her fellow judges, and the designers, not to mention quite a bit of offensive body shaming.
Heidi Klum works as a clan boss. She owns two companies that produce all kinds of necessities such as fashion, jewelery and tableware and her father Günther is the director of one of them. Günther also ran the OneEinsFab agency for 15 years, nurturing the careers of the Heidi girls there and managing to land no more than two real modeling contracts out of 250 young women (and these only in the national area).
Heidi used to work musically for GNTM with her ex-husband Seal, currently with her now-husband Tom Kaulitz, who is not afraid to duet with his wife, and with his brother Bill, who also served as a designer judge. Daughter Leni is the youngest employee of the family, three more children will probably join the company in the coming years.
At an estimated $10 million per season, GNTM pays less than a third of Heidi’s $36 million annual income, with the rest coming from advertising contracts, their companies and many assignments on American casting shows. According to Forbes, her fortune is 130 million euros. She is far from a billionaire. In comparison: the German TV locker Thomas Gottschalk, who discovered Heidi Klum in a modeling competition in 1992, earned a paltry 15 million euros with 150 “Wetten, dass…?” shows.
View this post on Instagram
For Pro7, the deal is still worth it. As the German “Handelsblatt” writes, GNTM’s advertising revenue in 2023 amounted to 55 million euros. According to the “Handelsblatt”, an average of 94 commercials were broadcast per episode.
Those who participate in GNTM are compensated as follows: students receive nothing, employees receive a small loss of income, the shoot lasts three to four months, some had to give up their jobs and apartments because of the participation.
“Heidi brought the dream into our children’s rooms,” says Lijana Kaggwa, who participated three years ago. So the dream. The dream of becoming such a Heidi. It wasn’t everyone’s nightmare. But for some it is. Lijana had it the hardest.
She was one of the girls labeled as a bitch. For a season, the crew behind the camera posed as her great ally, believing she had made true friends, comforted when she cried, trusted people, and trusted that she would do well on the air. She was wrong.
“I was spat on, they even put poisoned bait in my garden to poison my dog. There were people who wrote: ‘Take that black whore to the nearest tree and rape her!'” Pro7 gets such a detailed death and rape threat to Lijana that she will be placed under police protection.
Simone Kowalski, the winner of 2019, also experiences how a story is cut into her body, she cries and is annoyed all day long.
Tessa Bergmeier, who only got a job as a toilet cleaner after her riotous participation in Season 4, says it took her a long time to even trust people again. Even Taynara Wolf, who was “lucky enough” to be the “sunshine” of the season in 2016, says, “Well, the toilet became my best friend back then.” Because only there she was safe from cameras during the shoot.
A GNTM shooting day is long, often from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. The goal is not the “walks” or the “eliminations”, the goal is the production of interpersonal content, because reality has to become reality one way or another. This works best with the principle of the emotional pressure cooker. By locking the young women in the model villa, taking their mobile phones and internet, cutting them off so completely from the outside world that, for example, in February 2020, after filming was finished, they were released without warning into a world under corona .
There’s a lot going on in the pressure cooker, the shooting team spreading targeted rumors and fueling flourishing intrigue, that’s how reality TV works, so GNTM shouldn’t be too different from “Bachelor”. Or as Best Ager nominee Lieselotte says in the film, “You get thin-skinned when you’re on it, but I think on every reality show you get thin.”
The television-like confrontation with body images also makes young viewers thin-skinned. Relatively thin.
The difference between GNTM and any other reality show is called Heidi. The sun queen, around whom everything revolves in the end. And who has ensured that anyone who could steal the spotlight from her is gone.
In the past, says Peyman Amin, it wasn’t just the ‘girls’ who had to provide content, there were also characters like runway trainers Bruce Darnell or Jorge González who provided a lot of entertainment and relieved the candidates. But they glittered too much and had to go. Now the candidates are the “sufferers”.
At least the sensitive ones. Many are only there today to gain fame for their social media careers, says Peyman. Germany’s next influencer. The nervous costumes had hardened.
Until one day the dog is poisoned in the garden.
The documentary “Pressure, hate, manipulation: How does Germany’s next top model break?” can be seen in the ZDF media library and on YouTube.
source: watson
I’m Maxine Reitz, a journalist and news writer at 24 Instant News. I specialize in health-related topics and have written hundreds of articles on the subject. My work has been featured in leading publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and Healthline. As an experienced professional in the industry, I have consistently demonstrated an ability to develop compelling stories that engage readers.
