Jonathan Phang

Jonathan Phang

Britain's Missing Top Model was one of the most gripping reality shows to hit our screens this year and mentor Jonathan Phang certainly had his work cut out looking after the fiesty contestants. Female First caught up with him to find out what it was really like guiding the girls through their most difficult challenges.......Last night was the final show in the series and we saw winner Kelly Knox take part in a once in a lifetime photoshoot with Marie Claire and we also caught up with the other contestants to find out about what they really thought about the show. Jonathan chatted to us about the shocks on elimination day, the real challenges of putting disabled models into the harsh fashion industry and who he thought were the real stars of the show...... How did you get involved with Britain’s Missing Top Model?
Well it’s one of those random stories as life always is. A friend of mine runs a space at the London College of Fashion the producer went to visit the space, was chatting to her saying this is the show they were doing, that they were looking for judges and the mentors. My friend suggested me so the producers called me in, I went to have a meeting with them then I did some screen tests for the BBC then they offered me the role.Did you realise at the time how much of a challenge it was going to be?
I don’t think any of us realised anything about anything! It was one of those things that just grew organically. We knew it was going to be challenging in different ways because we were working with disabled people which not many of us had done before but it was really quite exciting in its own way because we never quite knew what to expect. It sounds quite weird but that was one of the exciting aspects of it I suppose because the show wasn’t that heavily formatted. The girls had never lived with other disabled girls before and I don’t think many people had worked with that amount of disabled people at one time so we never knew from day to day what would occur.Obviously the show threw up a lot of challenges that the girls would face in the real model world. Is there any moment when you realised how hard it would be for the girls?
Well I was nervous as hell before during and after really! I was sort of sleep deprived before we even started then it got even worse and I was surviving on about four hours sleep a night! Before you experience something first hand you could imagine what could happen or go wrong but you’re never really sure! So it just opened everybody’s eyes to haw difficult certain circumstances are for them.

Things that just don’t occur to able bodied people at all, like when you’re booking a location for a shoot, you have to worry about how wide the doors are for a wheel chair or making sure that something has a lift in it. Or is there somewhere for the girls to lie down if they get tired like with Jessica and her debilitating disease, she needed to have rests regularly. So just stuff like that was always quite surprising and a new thing to deal with really.

Right at the very beginning was there any contestant that stood out more than the others?
No I remained completely impartial throughout so I didn’t get involved with the girls squabbles so when I saw some of that on the show it surprised me. My role strictly was to nurture, to advise, just to help them make sense of everything that was going on from an industry point of view. But I deliberately didn’t allow myself to start having favourites or anything like that because I didn’t want that to come across. One thing I will say that I thought was really great, there was nothing manipulative at all within the judging process so it was always a surprise and always very genuine. Right up until the very end I had no idea how the pendulum was gonna swing and it took hours! So I really didn’t form that sort of opinion. I hope I just maintained the equilibrium that I needed to be a mentor and impartial in that way.

Where there any judge’s decisions or eliminations that shocked you more than others?
I think it’s very difficult in a model competition because it’s difficult for the girls not to take things personally. Certain issues I quite understand why they took it personally but I don’t think it was ever meant that way. Jenny’s departure was one of the more difficult ones but when people are judged on the way they look unfortunately you have to pick on the most minor things when you’re letting someone go. I remember from my days of judging on Britain’s Next Top Model it gets to that level where it’s like if you’re in a competition with musicians or something you’re slightly detached from it because you’re judging there skill so this is far more revealing so therefore it becomes difficult sometimes and a bit uncomfortable.

I think for me Jenny’s was the hardest one and Kellie Moody that was really upsetting when she went as well. None of them were easy let’s face it I practically cried every five minutes! Particularly on elimination day I was a mess! I was sad with Lilli because I think she took it the wrong way. The fact is everybody had to try to be honest and try to give a true impression of the industry and when you listen to clients or agents talking you are talking about humans as if they are commodities because that’s what they are as far as the profession goes.

So if you’re saying “Ok she’s great but she needs to tone up a little bit” it’s not “Lilli you’re fat”, it’s “if you want this job this is what the brief requires”. I thought that it was unfortunate that she left with that wrong impression. From my point of view, because I got quite close to them, when Jenny did the fashion show it took so much out of her to get down that catwork and I know how much it meant to her, it was really sad that she went on that day because she’d conquered a lot of fears and it was very moving to watch.

You say you remained impartial all the way through, but do you honestly think the right girl won in the end?
Yes I do. I think she is the most photogenic of all of them and have you seen the Marie Claire pictures? They’re absolutely sensational. I remember been on the shoot and she’d be sitting there, the camera would click, you’d see her come up on the computer and you’d think, “Shit! How did that happen!?” And I think Kellie went through a big transformation. She changed in very subtle ways but I think more than the other girls did and I think Sophie was very much the same she came as she want. I think Kelly really started to take it seriously and started to want it and she really developed into something quite surprising. And I think she’s at a good point to start off from.

So do you think she’s got what it takes?
I definitely do and do you know what the most important issue in all of this is we’ve given someone who had limited choices choice and choice of freedom. Whether she takes it up or not is kind of irrelevant. She’s done it, the shots are sensational, she’s got now the beginnings of a great book to go and try and be a model. If she can’t cope with the rejection angle of it then fine. She’s quite a tough girl, she’s in credit control so she’s used to ringing up people and been vile! If anyone can handle that rejection side out of all of our girls it will be Kellie.

Do you think she’s got what it takes to be a role model for other disabled girls wanting to follow in her footsteps?
Absolutely. I hope the show has given a lot of girls that kind of hope and I think she’s a very relatable kind of girl, she’s very girl next door, she’s very natural and she’s sort of proof really that anything can happen and good things can happen.

Also in the show you were quite rude when Sophie said that she’d finally accepted her chair as part of herself, why did you find that so irrational?
Because I could sense that she had an anger that she hasn’t dealt with and I really think that this show will help her. Everybody has issues in their life, particularly at that age and that’s how it should be. I mean I’m happier with myself at 42 than I was at 22 and I think one should be angst ridden. You have to question life and you have to question yourself and she has a façade because she is so articulate and bright and I saw it break down and I think that’s really an important step for her because the reality is for the rest of her life she is gonna be in that chair, she’s got a lot of bravado. Everybody had to confront their fears throughout this competition not just the contestants but all of us as well!

Sophie is quite passionate and determined about certain issues do you think she will still go on to do well?
I think she’s been offered some job on the Community Channel and I think she’ll make an excellent presenter and I think, hand on heart, that’s what she wants to do more than modelling, she just wants to have a voice. I think she’ll have more of a voice been a presenter or commentator or broadcaster, whatever you want to call it, more than she would ever be given the chance of a model. And she needs that because she’s the type of person who questions everything.

Do you honestly think that the fashion industry will ever be ready to see disabled models in the same light as able bodied models?
When I started in this industry 26 years ago I’d never seen a cover with a black girl. Loads of things have changed in my near three decades in this industry. Change will never occur unless something happens and hopefully this will make a positive change. We can’t under estimate the enormous achievements of Kellie been a disabled girl in six pages of Marie Claire. That is far more monumental than it sounds so it’s a terrible argument about why aren’t the girls getting prizes of £100,000, it’s not the point. To be photographed by a top photographer in an amazing magazine like Marie Claire is huge.

When you saw that fashion show, you couldn’t really sense watching it on telly, but when you watched it live you felt ashamed of yourself because there were these amazing models from Take 2. They couldn’t have been taller, slimmer and more experienced. They walked really well and it suddenly struck you. You thought “Christ why isn’t any high street retailer targeting clothes for people in wheelchairs or people with disabilities when 70% of the population is disabled and seeing it mixed in without it been tokenism made it really acceptable and really “God we are ashamed this isn’t normal because these people are beautiful and normal”. So yeah it needs to change and hopefully we’ve put a step towards it.

Finally, speaking about the modelling industry as a whole, in the past you’ve worked with Naomi Campbell and she’s recently been quoted as saying there’s not been a real supermodel since the likes of Kate Moss and Gisele. Do you agree?
Yeah I agree. I think there’s lots of reasons for that I think that maybe the public doesn’t want one as much as it used to. You know when I started in the business there weren’t supermodels there was always one or two then there was a huge wave of the supermodel era in the eighties and, lets face it, sorry to say this girls but none of them have really gone on to change the world so maybe they don’t care as much.

At that point when the supermodel era was around there weren’t as many glamorous actresses, we didn’t have the celeb culture that we have now. We’ve got far more levels of celebs than we did in the eighties. We had actresses that were trying to be real and therefore putting on weight and looking plain. It’s all a sort of political backlash to the time in my opinion, you know in the eighties we had aids, so how do you counterbalance it? You have the most strikingly beautiful images of healthy, strapping, affluent girls that you can imagine and Kate was our London pride.

Do you think it’s maybe become a bit of a throwaway term now?
I think so it just doesn’t mean as much any more. It just means beautiful girls making far too much money. Had any of them maybe stopped making the money and invested it somewhere and done something a bit more revolutionary we might care a bit more. I think we might expect that with the next bout of them.