The Swan: Behind the Mirror: Lets talk about the most WTF reveals

The Swan: Behind The Mirror is now streaming on Hulu. And if you needed to pause this reality-TV documentary for a rage break, you’re not alone. Like Reality Check: America’s Next Top Model, this critical look-back on a pop culture low point is full of jaw-droppingly outrageous revelations that demand a breather. And hey, we’re here to breathe with you!

Celebrated documentarian Erin Lee Carr built her reputation exploring the complexities of controversial (and criminal) figures in films like Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop, Mommy Dead & Dearest, and I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth V. Michelle Carter. However, she’s more recently explored where investigation and pop culture collide in Britney v. Spears, Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara, and The Swan: Behind the Mirror.

With her latest, Carr ushers audiences back to 2004, when Fox debuted The Swan, a new reality competition show that promised its subjects the chance to change their lives through 90 days of dieting, exercise, therapy, and free plastic surgery. However, few who signed on were prepared for the emotional manipulation producers would employ to ensure TV from which audiences couldn’t look away.

For The Swan: Behind the Mirror, Carr sat down with 12 “swans” across the show’s two seasons, as well as some of the series’ producers, personal trainers, and Dr. Randal Haworth, an outspoken plastic surgeon who has plenty of wild takes across this new doc.

There’s plenty of WTF reveals in this electrifying documentary. So, let’s dig in.

The Swan contestants didn’t know about the pageant when they signed on.

Creator and executive producer Nely Galán proposed The Swan as a makeover show that would allow average women to radically change their appearances, with the promise of a new and improved life. The participants — known as swans — were promised an expense-free overhaul that would include personal trainers, therapy sessions, dental surgery, and cosmetic surgery. However, the swans weren’t told in advance about the pageant that would become the show’s finale.

That idea came from Fox executive Mike Darnell, who senior producer Carl Buehl says described The Swan as a show where “We’re going to take ugly chicks and make them hot.”

Galán went with the idea, presenting it as an opportunity after the Season 1 Swans had signed on. “You ladies are going to get to be in a pageant,” is how Cindy from Season 1 recalls the news being “dropped [like] a bomb on us.”

“The Swan promised us therapy, plastic surgery,” Kelly A said. “It did not promise us a pageant.”

Kristy added, “None of that was mentioned before. Yeah, we did sign up to be filmed. Yes, we did sign up to share our stories. We didn’t sign up for a pageant.”

Making matters worse, the reality of the pageant wasn’t fully revealed until after their surgeries. Then they learned that each woman would be coupled up with another swan in their big reveal, but only one of each twosome would go onto the pageant. The others would be cut from the show and sent home. This meant the sisterhood forming behind the scenes was threatened by a climactic competition.

Beth said of this, “These women were the ones who were supporting you after you had surgery. They were emotionally the ones available that were there for you. And then all of a sudden, it’s my competition?”

Kristy reflected on the competition reveal, saying, “I don’t know what fresh hell you live in where you think it’s okay to bring these women into program under the guise that you’re giving them the gift of a lifetime, and then immediately pit them against the very women that they bonded with this whole time to go to your backwoods beauty pageant. They didn’t look at us and see us. They saw dollar signs.”

Spoilers: These women would not be defined by the producers or brought down by The Swan. While there will be a lot of lows, tears, and shocking reveals along the way, The Swan: Behind the Mirror is ultimately about how these women came together to become a flock that continues to support each other. (“Flock around and find out, bitch!”)

Swans felt powerless to say no.

This is a recurring revelation in The Swan: Behind the Mirror. First there was the pageant surprise. Then, when it came to consultations with the plastic surgeons, Tawnya recalled declining facial procedures and hearing from the other swans, “I didn’t know you could say no.”

The threat — said or implied — was that saying “no” meant being sent home.

Archival footage of The Swan reminds viewers how plastic surgeons, Dr. Randal Haworth and Dr. Terry Dubrow, pressured the women to get specific surgeries, including tummy tucks. Producer Jenna Baker confirmed the pressures applied, saying in her interview with Carr, “I’d say women had maybe 1% say over what procedures they had.”

From there, the swans healed in isolation, leaning on each other, as the producers provided sparse medical aftercare and kept the contestants away from their friends and family for the 90-day production period. They were also pressured to get back in the gym, while still healing from surgeries. (“I can’t control stupidity or stubborness,” Haworth said of these workouts.)

Dr. Randal Haworth compares women to toilets, his dog, and victims.

Speaking about how he helped cast wannabe swans, Haworth told Carr, “They wanted to know who would make good TV — not in terms of their backstory. I’m just looking at their face. And my goal was as a plumber, can I perform early hyperaesthetic surgery on these people?”

Carr then interrupts him to note that plumber is a “weird” analogy, because “you’re literally talking about toilets and women.”

To this, Haworth responds, “That was unintended.” He admits from there, he was searching for “drama” when it came to these physical transformations.

Later, he says, “[Getting a dog was] the only good thing that came out of my second marriage” because it taught him empathy. Getting a dog taught him empathy. Not his first marriage, or his second. “[My dog] taught me a lot about humans and how to be more empathetic.”

But perhaps the most infuriating thing Haworth says in The Swan: Behind the Mirror occurs when he’s confronted about how some swans feel harmed by the experience. To this, Haworth says, “There are no victims in life, there are only volunteers.”

This callous statement ignores how the show was misrepresented to its participants.

The Swan‘s crew was trying to make the women cry on camera.

This might not seem like news nowadays, as audiences are more aware of how reality TV producers manipulate participants. However, military veteran Dore’s story is a horrid example of such manipulation.

Producer Jenna Baker confirmed the “money shot” was “getting a swan to cry.” For Dore, this meant that after surgery, a cameraman poked at an emotional wound. While she was looking at photos of her newborn nephew, he said, “So how does it feel that everybody else can have kids, and you can’t have any?”

Dore retreated to the bathroom to escape the cameras. “It was despicable,” she said of their tactics.

“These women were treated like a storyline, not like people,” Baker reflected.

“I almost died for reality television.”

As featured in the film’s opening and trailer, Season 2 swan Kari recalled a medical emergency during her surgery, though she still doesn’t know exactly what happened.

Sitting alongside her sister Gina, she told Carr that a nurse who cared for her said the pain in her ribs suggested she had received chest compressions, which could mean her heart stopped on the table.

Dr. Randal Haworth has nude photos of The Swan Season 2 participants.

And the consent around the taking of these photos is debatable at best.

Amy from Season 2 says she and other participants were brought into a garage at Dr. Haworth’s office and photographed nude against a white backdrop. Several women expressed how they felt uncomfortable in the scenario. Kari recalled that no cameras from The Swan production were present, but her understanding was “if you don’t do this, you go home.”

Asked about this photo shoot, Haworth confirmed to Carr that it happened. “Thank you for reminding me,” he told Carr. “I was working with Dah Len, who’s a top photographer. He worked with Madonna. And we asked the girls if they would want to do before and after [shots]…for a big coffee table book that never saw the light of day.”

Asked if the women consented to be photographed, he insisted they did. But Amy says that’s not how she was approached about the shoot, and Kari expressed surprise about the supposed “super artsy” book — as Haworth put it.

“I still have those pictures,” he noted. “It was an art project.”

The Swan: Behind the Mirror is now streaming on Hulu. Look for more about the doc in the Oct. 2 episode of Say More, featuring documentarian Erin Lee Carr.

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