Sean Drakes

In­ter­view and pho­tog­ra­phy by Sean Drakes

This week Wendy Fitzwilliam, one of the Caribbean's most ad­mired beau­ty pageant win­ners and busi­ness­women, in­vit­ed some styl­ish com­rades, faith­ful spon­sors and me­dia from across the re­gion to the rooftop lounge of the Bet­sy Ho­tel on Mi­a­mi Beach to toast her ven­ture in­to re­al­i­ty TV.

For the sopho­more sea­son of Caribbean's Next Top Mod­el (CNTM), pro­duc­tion was staged in Bar­ba­dos. "We worked like an­i­mals, we turned this show out in less than 21 days," shares Fitzwilliam, who was crowned Miss Uni­verse in 1998.

Spec­u­la­tion that CNTM left Trinidad due to al­leged dis­agree­ments and salty in­ci­dents with some pro­duc­tion crew that stalled CNTM's de­but, is chat­ter that doesn't mat­ter to Fitzwilliam. "The beau­ty of this fran­chise is that it's a re­gion­al fran­chise, every sea­son we get to move the en­tire pro­duc­tion. I loved work­ing in Bar­ba­dos, the crew was amaz­ing...to­tal­ly pro­fes­sion­al."

Rough­ly 8,000 can­di­dates ap­plied to com­pete in the ten-episode se­ries that Wendy and co-ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er Dionyse Fitzwilliam are gam­bling will be a game-chang­er for TV pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion in the Caribbean. Flow TV un­veiled the first episode in ten coun­tries last Mon­day, while Wendy posed for pho­tos and field­ed ques­tions in Mi­a­mi. She spoke on ra­tio­nal­is­ing fail­ure, fa­cil­i­tat­ing dreams, and grow­ing her au­di­ence with­out Tyra.

Q: What at­tract­ed you to this project?

A: I have al­ways loved fash­ion, I've mod­elled since I was 11. I see it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties for young women of the Caribbean. That's very im­por­tant to both my sis­ter and I, that's why we got in­volved.

Sec­ond­ly, we don't have any en­ter­tain­ment in the Caribbean that cov­ers or tran­scends the lan­guage di­vide. Even in sport, as pop­u­lar as crick­et is, it's an Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean ac­tiv­i­ty and most of the ac­tiv­i­ties are male-dom­i­nat­ed and around an event. Even though Car­ni­val cel­e­brates women of the Caribbean more than it does any­thing else, it's still an event.

There's noth­ing that delves a lit­tle deep­er con­tin­u­ous­ly, and a tele­vi­sion show gives you that. If you think about TV, there are two ar­eas of the arts and cul­ture that have the abil­i­ty to leave a long-term, last­ing im­pact on a mass scale rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly, that's mu­sic and tele­vi­sion.

The rea­son why the mi­nor­i­ty en­roll­ment at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty sky­rock­et­ed in the 1980s is be­cause of The Cos­by Show. Af­ter 9/11, when New York was suf­fer­ing, what re­al­ly brought the city back was en­ter­tain­ment and Sex And The City. Sex And The City has been off the air since 2009, and we're still drink­ing cos­mopoli­tans and go­ing to restau­rants that Car­rie Brad­shaw and her band of bud­dies talked about. TV has an abil­i­ty to con­nect emo­tion­al­ly be­cause it is much longer than a mo­ment. Con­tin­ues on Page B2

If I knew, my friend, the hard work that it took to pull some­thing like this off, we may not be sit­ting here now. I'm hap­py that I was a lit­tle na�ve in that re­gard.

Since you recog­nise the val­ue and pow­er of TV, did you con­sid­er cre­at­ing your own show in­stead of li­cenc­ing a fran­chise?

I didn't know how to make it hap­pen. In this space there is noth­ing that tru­ly uni­fies the re­gion. When I was com­pet­ing in Miss T&T, I said very clear­ly that I know what­ev­er I do, whether I'm lawyer­ing [sic] or be­ing Miss T&T or Miss Uni­verse, I would like to spend my time unit­ing us and cel­e­brat­ing us be­yond our shores. How? I didn't know.

The fran­chise makes per­fect sense. It is very recog­nis­able and well re­spect­ed glob­al­ly, but most im­por­tant­ly, here in the Caribbean. In the Caribbean we're not great risk tak­ers, our cul­ture is gen­er­al­ly risk ad­verse, so it makes sense to go with some­thing that is es­tab­lished, pop­u­lar and well-liked, then cre­ate our own flavour. Make it in­to our own event.

We've done that. Just like we've made a par­tic­u­lar fried chick­en com­pa­ny from Amer­i­ca our own through­out the re­gion. I know we're do­ing the same thing with this. When you com­pare CNTM to the 24 oth­er fran­chis­es in the Top Mod­el brand ours is unique­ly us.

Oc­to­ber 14, Tyra Banks tweet­ed: "#ANTM22 should be our last cy­cle. I tru­ly be­lieve it's time." This cy­cle con­cludes in De­cem­ber. Were you giv­en heads-up that re­tire­ment was so near?

We saw it com­ing, that's all I can say. That can be in­ter­pret­ed as a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty and al­so it can be a lit­tle bit un­nerv­ing. Amer­i­ca's Next Top Mod­el has been the an­chor of the fran­chise. ANTM, for about sev­en years, has been de­clin­ing in rat­ings sig­nif­i­cant­ly in terms of view­er­ship in Amer­i­ca.

But the oth­ers, Aus­tralia par­tic­u­lar­ly, CNTM the first sea­son, did very well in terms of view­er­ship across the re­gion. The dis­ad­van­tage is while ANTM was on air, un­like CSI and Law & Or­der, the Top Mod­el fran­chis­es were not giv­en per­mis­sion by CBS to air in North Amer­i­ca, which is a huge mar­ket.

Con­sid­er­ing the tri­als, teach­ings and tur­moil with pro­duc­tion on sea­son one, what is your take­away from your maid­en jour­ney in­to TV pro­duc­tion?

My biggest take­away is pa­tience with my­self, pa­tience with the process. TV is not as or­gan­ised per se a busi­ness as bank­ing, which is where my sis­ter was be­fore. It's a lot more ad hoc and like every­thing else, not be­cause you at­tain suc­cess in one area that means you are au­to­mat­i­cal­ly go­ing to have it in the next. I un­der­stood that very clear­ly.

I have done many things well and many more things not so well, I have failed at a lot. But when you are very well known, like I am through­out the re­gion, your fail­ures are am­pli­fied. When you have suc­cess no one re­mem­bers them. My biggest take­away is pa­tience with the growth process, not for­get­ting that. Tak­ing the time to learn the as­pects of the busi­ness and we've done that.

In the first sea­son, you had some­one guid­ing you or jumped in feet first?

We jumped in­to it to a large ex­tent and we jumped in with a cer­tain lev­el of in­ex­pe­ri­ence. Even though CBS pro­vid­ed a lit­tle sup­port, in terms of pro­duc­tion, the busi­ness of TV, un­der­stand­ing the Caribbean, we didn't ful­ly un­der­stand. We didn't ful­ly un­der­stand that the broad­cast­ing rights of Amer­i­can sta­tions in the Caribbean is il­le­gal or has been for some time. That re­quired some time to clean up and we are do­ing that now as a re­gion.

Might the can­cel­la­tion of ANTM af­fect the suc­cess of CNTM?

It will af­fect CNTM pos­i­tive­ly, be­cause there is tremen­dous in­ter­est in the world of fash­ion and mod­el­ling re­gion­al­ly. There is noth­ing else like it in this space here. The in­ter­est in the Caribbean and this show on the con­ti­nent of Africa and else­where is un­re­al. The in­ter­est amongst our di­as­po­ra con­tin­ues to be amaz­ing. The in­ter­est from the Span­ish-speak­ing Caribbean, the Dutch...they are all in.

The end of ANTM is a dis­tinct ad­van­tage for CNTM's growth, I hope CBS In­ter­na­tion­al and Tyra you're hear­ing that!

Iden­ti­fy some ben­e­fits to CNTM con­tes­tants?

What CNTM is for the win­ner, it's a long job in­ter­view be­cause you're prepar­ing to work in this in­dus­try with our agency part­ner [Mint Man­age­ment] in the Unit­ed States. For the young ladies who don't win the take­away is the train­ing. You learn from the in­ter­ac­tions with our spe­cial guests who know what they're do­ing in this space. You learn how to work the things that work for you as a mod­el. If you're smart you can blos­som af­ter this even if you don't win. The op­por­tu­ni­ties are end­less if you see it as such, that's life pe­ri­od.

Drop a tease about your spe­cial guests this sea­son.

We have a steady ro­ta­tion of guests: Dani Swan, who is an Aus­tralian ac­tress who is the body that is used for mo­tion cap­ture in the Ma­trix. We al­so used Lene Hall, one of the on­ly Caribbean mod­els to land four beau­ty cam­paigns. One of our guys, who you would not think of for a show of this na­ture, Brad Tel­ma, he is a Bar­ba­di­an surfer.

He was one of Vir­gin's brand am­bas­sadors. He did one of the most in­ter­est­ing chal­lenges with our young ladies. We use Caribbean tal­ent who have ex­celled out­side of the re­gion and Caribbean tal­ent still liv­ing in the re­gion and do­ing well in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Ex­pect quite a few out of the box things.

What mantra dri­ves your pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits?

This I learned at St Joseph's Con­vent. In very sub­tle ways Sis­ter Paul, God bless her, told us this every sin­gle morn­ing at as­sem­bly: Rule num­ber one, nev­er be num­ber two.