‘The Swan’ producer was ‘a bit queasy’ seeing what contestants endured

The Swan, the controversial reality competition series that aired on Fox for two seasons in 2004, has not aged well. The series focused solely on female contestants’ appearances, subjecting them to multiple plastic surgeries, which culminated in face-offs and a dramatic pageant that — it turns out — at least some of them were unaware of when they signed on.

The first episode of Vice’s new docuseries Dark Side of Reality TV breaks down some of the problems contestants faced on the makeover series, from being lured onto the show under false pretenses to feeling pressured to go under the knife more than they wanted.

“I was a bit queasy watching what they were going through,” Michael Addis, a producer on the show, said. “I remember joking with other producers at the time, ‘Well, there’s a circle of hell that we’re gonna be in because of producing this show.'”

The women told Vice they had been promised three months in Los Angeles, where they would have access to top-notch therapists, personal trainers, and life coaches, as well as plastic surgery.

Season 1 contestant Cindy Ingle was “so, so excited” about the potential impact on her life.

“We weren’t focusing on our outer selves,” she said. “We would spend the time thinking about our inner self, who we are, who we want to be, and how we want to succeed and reach those goals.”

Her costar Belinda Bessant was surprised to learn the series would include a pageant at the end, where the woman would be judged solely on her outward transformation.

“I think everyone’s in shock when they realized it was a win or lose situation,” Bessant said. “I still thought I was doing this for myself, and this was all about my goal, my transformation. This was not the concept we were given when we had agreed to do the show.”

Another contestant, Tawnya Cooke, was reeling from losing her job, brother, and, through a recent divorce, her husband when she went on the show. For her, the biggest appeal was a career coach, which she didn’t receive.

Cooke underwent plastic surgery, however the show’s surgeons wanted to see more of a transformation. She recounted telling them she wanted to keep a bump on her nose that ran through her family. Archival footage from The Swan showed a doctor saying he was “a bit disappointed” with her decision. Cooke said in a new interview that she was sad to see a doctor speaking about her in that way.

Ingle said she “really didn’t know” that she “could say no to some of the procedures being done.”

While she wasn’t told that she had to undergo them, Ingle said she felt she had to take advantage of the opportunity.

Dr. Terry Dubrow, a plastic surgeon from The Swan, who’s now known for his appearances on Botched and other reality TV shows like The Real Housewives of Orange County, said doctors were doing as many procedures as they could safely do at once.

“Even though it was gloriously interesting and exciting and fun, it was exhausting,” Dubrow said. “I think in the two weeks of every day surgery that we did, we did something like 200 plastic surgery operations on these patients. That was more than [what] a typical plastic surgeon would do in an entire year!”

After their surgeries, the women were quickly sent to the gym, and the docuseries shows footage of them working out with bandages on. Looking back, the contestants recalled being in excruciating pain.

In the years after The Swan, the women discovered that a significant amount of their transformation required costly upkeep they were responsible for paying. Ingle spent $10,000 to repair a breast implant that popped and deflated.

The new series, Dark Side of Reality TV airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Vice. Future episodes focus on shows including Joe Millionaire, The Surreal Life, and more.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.