ABC's new True Beauty plays tricks on Dallas magician's assistant among others
01/04/09 07:12 PM
By ED BARK
Oh behave. Ashton Kutcher's latest reality concoction, ABC's True Beauty, includes 23-year-old Julia Anderson of Dallas among its 10 duped hotties.
Premiering Monday at 9 p.m. (central), the one-hour competition series supposedly tricks its subjects into thinking they're being judged solely by their bods. But no. Arbiters Vanessa Minnillo, Cheryl Tiegs and Nole Marin also will be looking for at least scattered evidence of inner beauty. The overall winner, after eight scheduled episodes, gets $100 grand plus his or her picture in People's annual "100 Most Beautiful People" issue.
Anderson, described as a "magician's assistant" in ABC publicity materials, also is the former Miss Grapevine 2008 and Miss Teen Texas 2002. But her earlier crown was forfeited after Anderson was arrested outside an apartment complex and charged with public intoxication. She said it wasn't her fault, but that's life.
Review copies of True Beauty weren't available. But in ABC promotional clips, Kutcher summons all the wisdom at his command in deducing that "good looking people immediately assume that they are of a different sort of echelon of being than the rest of us . . . Good looking people get a lot of things for free."
Kutcher then comments on each of the 10 contestants while sifting through their glamour shots. "Beauty queen, just beauty queen," he says of Anderson. "Pageant gal. Va-va voom."
Anderson's skin-deep ABC bio reveals that "while her tan comes easy, she must get eyelash extensions every two weeks . . . And while she admits to being a hypocrite at times, she insists it is a quality not a weakness . . . She is convinced that America will love her." Clearly.
Kutcher's behind-the-camera TV credits include MTV's Punk'd and The WB/CW's Beauty and the Geek, both of which worked. But he's lately had a trio of bombs -- NBC's The Real Wedding Crashers, ABC's Miss Guided and this season's earlier Opportunity Knocks, which ABC kayoed after just three episodes.
CBS' new Game Show In My Head, which premiered Saturday with former Fear Factor host Joe Rogan at the controls, also is from Kutcher's production company. Dare to be great.