Australia’s Next Top Model was the reality show we were all obsessed with. The local version of America’s Next Top Model, featuring Sarah Murdoch, Jennifer Hawkins, Jodhi Meares and Erika Heynatz as hosts, it ran for 10 seasons, and was famous for the judges’ comments (remember Charlotte Dawson labelling girls the “Dapto dogs”?), the huge careers it launched (Alice Burdeu, Simone Holtznagel, Duckie Thot) and, of course, that time that Sarah announced the wrong girl as the winner.
With the explosive three-part docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model premiering on Netflix, two former winners of Australia’s Next Top Model look back on their time on the show.
Gemma Sanderson, Australia’s Next Top Model season 1 winner
Gemma Sanderson’s dream came true when she won the first season of Australia’s Next Top Model. But watching the show go to air turned out to be a lot tougher than she expected.
Gemma was a 22-year-old uni student from Newcastle who’d always wanted to be a model.
She’d been a finalist in the Dolly model competition the year that Pia Loyola (later Pia Miller) won, but she knew that she was “getting old” for modelling. And then the auditions for the first season of Australia’s Next Top Model came along.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to go on this show,’” Gemma tells TV WEEK.
Gemma knew what the show was all about, having watched two seasons of America’s Next Top Model.
The two months of filming – living in the Top Model house with nine other girls, with Erika Heynatz as their mentor, doing shoots involving everything from pole dancing to spiders – were “amazing”.
“It was the best two months of my whole entire life,” Gemma remembers. “It was so much fun.”
The season began airing in January 2005, and Gemma watched it back with two of the other girls who’d competed against her, Chloe Wilson and Simmone Duckmanton.
“When we watched the show back, I was like, ‘Oh, oh, this doesn’t look as fun as it was,’” Gemma admits. “I didn’t think there was that much bitchiness in the house. I really didn’t.
“It was very difficult watching it back on TV.”
There was a shock in one of the final episodes.
“One of the girls didn’t want me to win, and she’d said, ‘Don’t let Gemma win,’ which I didn’t know until I watched the show, and then I’m sitting there with one of the girls that was like, ‘Yeah, okay, cool. We won’t let her win.’ And I’m like, ‘Uh, Chloe…’”
On the show, Gemma opened up about experiencing depression. She says all the girls were told to just be themselves, and she decided that’s what she would do.
“They wanted me to talk about the depression and I thought it was a really positive thing because back then no one talked about it. I was like, ‘Well, if I can help other people…’
“It wasn’t really a big deal in the show except my medication ran out and I needed to go get it. And I asked several times and because we obviously had to have someone go with us everywhere, it just didn’t work out. So three days off, not having my meds, I just felt so on edge. Everything was just so overwhelming.
“It wasn’t great.”
After winning the season, and a modelling contract, Gemma’s career took off. She says the show improved her confidence as a model “a million per cent”.
“I lived and worked in New York, London, Milan, Hamburg, Cape Town, Singapore… I did a TV commercial with [footballer] Cristiano Ronaldo. I worked with Victoria Beckham on her first launch of her brand. There were just three girls and we were in a helicopter with her flying from London to Manchester and back, which was pretty awesome. She was so lovely. Then I did a film clip with Duran Duran called ‘Girl Panic!’ and that was pretty cool because all the supermodels were in it.”
When Gemma moved back to Australia, she returned to uni and studied aviation management.
“I work full-time in aviation safety and compliance, but I do modelling whenever I can,” she explains. “From travelling, I just developed a love for aviation. So now I’m doing that, which is really good, because I have two little girls.”
So if Australia’s Next Top Model was being made in 2026, would it be any different? Gemma thinks it would have to be.
“The industry has changed so much,” she says. “It’s very much more inclusive now. So I think they wouldn’t probably be saying so much criticism about girls’ bodies or looks.
“It would just naturally be different because of how much diversity there is in models now. It’s amazing.”
Amanda Ware, Australia’s Next Top Model season 6 winner
Amanda Ware was just a teenager when she found herself at the centre of one of the most memorable reality TV moments of all time: host Sarah Murdoch announcing the wrong winner of Australia’s Next Top Model.
Amanda, from the Gold Coast, was 17 years old and only three days into a uni degree when she got the call that she’d been cast in the sixth season of the reality show in 2010. Although she’d always wanted to give modelling a go, she found the experience of living in the Top Model house “daunting”.
“I’d never lived away from home, and I hadn’t really travelled anywhere without my parents,” Amanda tells TV WEEK. “We had two 10-minute phone calls a week with family, which was filmed.”
She says she was “quite naïve” and not very competitive.
“I was like, ‘I’m just here to have fun. I’m not really here to win.’”
Having grown up on the Gold Coast, Amanda was pretty comfortable with the idea of wearing a bikini. But she found some of the photo shoots “super difficult”.
“Wearing lingerie in front of a camera that was on top of a mountain in the snow… they wanted you to push through the boundaries, but you’re just settling into being in front of a camera.”
Amanda made it to the final two, alongside Kelsey Martinovich, and then host Sarah Murdoch announced Kelsey the winner. Amanda remembers feeling “pretty disappointed” that Kelsey had won, but accepting.
“Kelsey would have been just as deserving a winner,” she says.
But then everything went off the rails. The celebrations were interrupted by Sarah apologising: “I’m so sorry… it’s Amanda.”
Amanda says she and Kelsey “kind of forgot” it was live TV.
“We just looked at each other and we’re like, ‘Oh, well, do we just do it again?’ We were just a little bit flabbergasted. We still talk about it to this day.”
In the days that followed, when the media should have been talking to Amanda about her win, everyone wanted to talk to both Amanda and Kelsey about the mix-up.
“But in the end, it was really nice to have someone there,” Amanda adds, “because I was still so young and I didn’t really know what to do with myself.”
She says the incident showed Kelsey to be an “amazing person”.
“She’s done so well from just accepting that and then going forward with it because she’s had a fantastic career.”
After her win, Amanda went to New York, where she was recognised from the finale mix-up – “I just didn’t realise how viral it had gone” – and ended up having an “incredible” time.
“At first it was incredibly lonely because I was very young, very fresh and I hadn’t really travelled anywhere,” she admits. “But it was a really great experience.
“Then I bounced around a bit and went to Paris and then landed in London and I lived in London for eight-and-a-half years.”
She says she wouldn’t have got to where she is today without Top Model.
“It taught me a lot about myself, it made me travel the world, I met my husband who is British… I think, with my modelling career, I may not have pushed myself as much had I not been given that opportunity.”
Amanda is now living back in Queensland with her husband and their three-year-old son, and is a full-time uni student, doing a Masters of osteopathic medicine. Her modelling career is “very part-time” at the moment.
She believes modelling can be “a double-edged sword”.
“You’re basing your monetary value off your looks and your ability to sell yourself,” she explains. “So sometimes I have a bit of a think about that and I go, ‘Ooh, would I want my child doing that?’ But I’ve been through it so I could protect my children better.”
She says her agency has already suggested that she do a shoot with her son.
“I said, ‘I couldn’t think of anything more stressful!’” she laughs. “He wouldn’t sit still.”
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