Finally, someone is reckoning with the insanity that was The Swan. If you thought the makeovers highlighted on Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model were intense, you’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. Similar to The Biggest Loser (which also got the doc treatment last year), The Swan was a mid-aughts reality TV show that promised to change lives from the outside in, going to extreme measures to present flashy before-and-after transformations. But instead of using extreme diets, workouts, or haircuts, the show used plastic surgery.
Really.
Now Hulu is releasing a documentary about the show, which may bear some uncanny resemblances to the “glow-ups” we fetishize online. Here’s what we know…
Wait, what was the premise of The Swan?
“Ugly” women got trainers, therapists, and yes, surgeons to help them get prettier and more confident over the course of three months, and then they did a beauty pageant.
In fairness, people at the time thought it was an awful idea, and it was canceled after two seasons (many sources will say one season, as Fox has apparently tried to bury season two…but it existed, sorry!). The show has dismal reviews and is consistently ranked as one of the worst, if not the worst, of reality television.
Who is making the documentary?
Erin Lee Carr, who directed documentaries Mommy Dead and Dearest, I Love You, Now Die, and Framing Britney Spears, will helm the documentary film. The film’s logline, per Hulu, reads, “The inside story of the most controversial reality series of all time, the people behind it, and the women whose lives were changed by it forever.”
Carr wrote on Instagram, “Reality TV in the early 2000s rarely got stranger than The Swan but what made the show so compelling was the parallel journey of the series and the women at its center. Millions of viewers watched with a mix of fascination and disbelief, but what happens to a person when they’re cut off from their reflection for three months? In many ways, the show became a social experiment, and our documentary examines it from every angle.”
When does The Swan documentary come out?
TBD.