Next Top Model’s Erika Heynatz: Why I’ll Never Watch Reality TV Again

Erika Heynatz has launched a scathing critique of reality TV and the beauty industry, admitting she no longer watches the genre that once helped shape her public profile.

The former Australia’s Next Top Model host, 49, opened up in a candid interview with Stellar magazine, revealing she has turned her back on reality TV since her early stint fronting the series nearly two decades ago.

‘I hosted reality television and then I was a participant in it, but I’ve never watched it again,’ she told the publication.

‘I don’t have much of a stomach for the redemption stories – it’s not for me.’

Heynatz, who began modelling while studying graphic design at university, said she now feels disconnected from the world of glossy makeovers and dramatic on-screen arcs.

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‘There are so many more interesting, creative, charismatic, inspiring people we could be watching on our screens,’ she added.

Heynatz hosted the first season of Australia’s Next Top Model in 2005.

She returned to host the second season in 2006 before being replaced by Jodhi Meares from season three onwards.

These days, Heynatz has channelled her energy into Stupormodel – her bold new stage production drawing from her own life in the fashion industry.

The self-written show sold out its initial two performances and has since added a third due to demand.

‘The show is through the lens of my life as a model, but these are universal themes that really strike a chord,’ she explained.

At the heart of the production is a reckoning with the beauty myths Heynatz admits she helped perpetuate during her modelling and television career.

‘Hopefully it brings awareness, because for a lot of women there’s this feeling of being complicit in their own oppression when it comes to standards of beauty. Like me,’ she said.

‘I’ve been selling that dream, but at the same time, I’ve also bought snake oil’ Erika continued. 

‘I’m the person who’s been transmitting those images and transmitting those standards, but I also cannot escape them.’

Heynatz, who also appeared on It Takes Two and competed on Dancing with the Stars.

She has since reinvented herself over the years with a string of acting roles in Home and Away, Legally Blonde: The Musical, and other stage productions.

Erika previously admitted that there’s ‘no secret’ to juggling her career in the entertainment industry being a mother.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia Erika said: ‘It takes a village, it always does. 

‘We’re really lucky we’ve got family close by and also we take turns, when we want to go out do things, we just swap it over. Fair’s fair.’ 

The beauty shares son Charlie with husband Andrew Kingston. 

Andrew and Erika married in 2007, and in March celebrated an incredible 18 years together.