Naomi Campbell Explains How The Face Will Be Different From ANTM, Which She's Never Seen

When a TV show does really well, the copycats pop up. Just as Pop Idol/American Idol begat The Voice, so has Amerca’s Next Top Model inspired The Face, which debuts next week. Tyra Banks turned ANTM into a global phenomenon: There are Top Model programs in 170 countries. So what does The Face have that ANTM doesn’t? For starters, not one but three incredibly successful models star: Naomi Campbell, Coco Rocha, and Karolina Kurkova. In an interview with Fashionista, Naomi explains that she is actually the OG:

Well first of all I am different, I’m before Tyra and I have a lot of respect for Tyra and what she’s done with America’s Next Top Model and what she’s done for young women out there who want to be in the fashion industry. I don’t like to compare anything that I do. I’ve not really watched [ANTM] but from what I know it’s a different type of format.

And, kind of like The Voice, she and the other pros are mentors, not judges:

We’re not judges. What it is, is the clients, the brands that we bring on–they decide, which is how it is in the real world of modeling. What attracted me was the mentoring side of it. I’ve been asked for many years to do television, but I didn’t feel comfortable telling someone, you’re not right, you’re not this.

In addition, ANTM was about finding American women; The Face has contestants from Russia, Australia and China as well as San Francisco and The Bronx; the winner will be the face of Ulta, a cosmetics chain store with locations across the country.

Naomi also seemed to point out that the winner will have a “real” “job” — perhaps she heard about how some of the ANTM winners (and runners-up) kind of disappear after they’re named “top” model?

I definitely think [the winner] will be seen; she will be known across America… She fits the criteria; she looks like a model; she is a model; she has that extra little something we talk to our girls about having to have.

Of course, on thing ANTM had going for it was that it aired on the CW, a channel people actually watch. I don’t even know what channel Oxygen is on.

In other news, the ad for The Face has been so heavily Photoshopped it looks like everyone is made of marzipan.