“Modeling was something I always wanted to do, but I never knew how to go about it,” Randall said.
Less than a year after that conversation, Randall finished among the final four contestants on the CWTV show “America’s Next Top Model.” With no previous modeling experience, she worked with Tyra Banks and other renowned names in the fashion industry. The show’s 15th cycle was filmed for six weeks in June and July, and episodes aired this fall from September to December.
Though she didn’t win the competition, the show has opened doors for Randall. Randall, a history major and Baltimore native, said she plans to finish the semester and then take time off from academics to pursue a career in modeling.
“One of the designers actually told me he would take me to a major agency in New York,” Randall said. “That was the point where I decided to go for it. I got enough positive feedback that I feel confident.”
Randall’s perspective has changed markedly since she first applied for the show; she initially approached modeling as more of a hobby than a career. Last winter, she decided to leave the lacrosse team before the start of the season and pursue modeling more seriously. She saw an ad for the 15th cycle of the show while watching “Gossip Girl” and decided to apply.
May-Ying Medalia ’12 said she came back to her dorm one day and found her roommate, one of Randall’s friends, taking pictures of Randall for the application.
“We took the pictures and Jane said she would send them off,” Medalia said. “We were kind of joking, but she was able to pull it off.”
Randall did not expect to get a response, but then she got a call inviting her to the New York casting. Banks, the show’s creator and host, had picked Randall to audition along with a few hundred other contestants, many of whom had been recruited from professional modeling websites.
“It was absolutely insane. You couldn’t even tell it was a modeling show — there were people yelling and screaming,” Randall said of the casting session.
Feeling overwhelmed, she found the casting director and said she had changed her mind. But the casting director gave her a reason to stay.
“She basically implied that I would get a call back, so it seemed like a good reason to stick around,” Randall said.
In May, she was invited to the semifinals in Los Angeles, which was the first phase that was filmed for airing. One of the biggest challenges was not the competition on the show, but fitting filming in between final exams, Randall said.
“I got very lucky and was able to turn some papers in early. After filming, I got back from the airport, pulled an all-nighter and took an exam the next day. I talked to [Deputy Registrar] Robert Bromfield, but apparently that wasn’t an acceptable reason to have an exam moved,” Randall said, laughing.
Randall said she felt reasonably confident going into the six-week filming period over the summer.
“I knew I wasn’t one of the girls cast for the reality TV purposes based on the feedback initially, so I thought I had a good chance of going far,” she explained. “But if someone had told me in the first week that I would be in the top four, I probably wouldn’t have believed them.”
As the competition went on, she realized she had a lot to learn.
“I thought the show would be more of a learning process, but I was wrong about most people not having much experience,” she said, since many of her competitors had previous exposure to the modeling industry.
Living in the reality TV environment posed its own set of challenges off the set. There were many restrictions, even while off camera, and Randall said the models were constantly supervised.
“I was reading a book at night and thought it would be fine since I was done filming for the day,” Randall said. “Then the phone rang, and they said, ‘Stop reading.’ I looked up and there was a camera right above my bed. Big Brother is always watching.”
Models were not permitted to have books or music in the house. Bathrooms in the house had no doors, and if more than two women were in the bathroom, the crews were permitted to enter and film, Randall added.
While Randall said she never really became comfortable being in front of the cameras, dealing with some of the judges’ critiques was an even bigger challenge. Early on, she did her best to avoid the privileged Ivy League stereotypes that the judges tried to bring out.
“I do go to Princeton and do own a pony, but those facts don’t define me as a person or as a model. I didn’t give them an edit they could really work with, but I’m fine with that because I’d rather not be shown in that light,” she said.
She said she thought her reluctance to fit this mold may be one explanation for the string of personality critiques that she faced at the end of the show.
“I did experience a little bit of an identity crisis, mainly because my confidence was really affected in a way that I hadn’t expected. It was hard to hear, and it became very frustrating to get critiques on my personality when I really wanted to get good modeling advice,” Randall explained.
If she was less than thrilled with the feedback from the official judges, Randall said that guest models and designers offered a lot of advice. A favorite memory was working with designer Zac Posen during his runway show. Posen was one of the first people on the show to give Randall positive feedback.
“He told me I didn’t know how to walk in heels, but he still had me open the show and gave me an extra look,” she said. “He had supermodels there but chose me and told me I had a lot of potential.”
She also had many supporters in the audience who sent her messages, made video montages of her scenes, formed Facebook groups supporting her and even sent her a picture of her face combined with Justin Bieber’s after Randall mentioned him in one episode.
And although the producers warned her that she would probably face some backlash when she returned to campus, Randall said life has remained fairly normal.
“I was a little hesitant to tell people, but they’ve been really supportive. Even my professors have been supportive of my decision to take time off to pursue my career,” she said. “If people talk about the show, they don’t talk to me about it. It hasn’t changed my life here at all.”
The only exception was her weekly appearance on television.
“The first couple of weeks, people would scream, ‘There she is!’ every time she was on camera, but as the weeks went on she was just part of the show,” said Barb Previ ’12, Randall’s former lacrosse teammate. “It didn’t seem like she was acting, so it was cool to see her being her on TV.”
“It was fun to compare her perspective on what happened to what we saw on screen,” Medalia said.
Randall’s friends said they weren’t surprised that she had done well on the show.
“She’s an incredibly competitive person,” Medalia said. “Once she saw there was room to succeed, she just went for it.”
Though Randall was not allowed to reveal events on the show before they aired, friends said they could tell how she had done on a particular week based on her mood.
“The one breakdown episode — the whole week before she was worried about how it would be shown. From what she said, they could take any situation and turn it to how they want it,” Medalia said.
That’s one of the reasons Randall said she does not plan to be on reality television again any time soon. Still, she said the experience was invaluable.
“I went into the competition seeing if I could model, and after leaving I feel much more like an actual model,” Randall said. “I’m ready to embrace the industry head on.”
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