Janice Dickinson, the sharp-tongued former America's Next Top Model judge and The Surreal Life 5 cast member who has alternately claimed that she both quit and was fired from Top Model, has landed a new reality TV project -- a pilot deal for her own Oxygen network reality show.
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According to Variety, Dickinson, who recently made a surprise return visit to Top Model as a "guest photographer," is currently in the middle of recruiting her first clients (although based on her previous comments that none of the girls that appear on the UPN show are even good enough to be working models, don't expect her to sign up any of the girls that Tyra rejects.)
If Oxygen likes what they see in the pilot, the series is expected to premiere in early 2006. Although Oxygen executive Debby Beece calls Dickinson a "dynamic and fearless character," she also admits that Dickinson also brings something else to the small cable network: must-see train-wreck TV. "If nothing else, she's always surprising, and it's made for some good TV," Beece told Variety. "We love the idea of women entrepreneurs, and we've done shows about that in a more earnest vain. But we hope Janice's show is going to be more contemporary and fun."
Although Dickinson had told the New York Times in August that she had quit Top Model because she wanted more money, she later changed her story a week later, telling Radar Magazine that "I got fired." "At first it was a trip. I believed in the show and it was fun. But after a few episodes I began getting labeled a bitch, and that got to me," said Dickinson. "I was just telling the truth and I was saving these girls from going out there and being told that they're too short, too fat, their skin’s not good enough." "I'd rather be an honest bitch than some ass-kissing, sugarcoating, namby-pamby, wiping-ass motherf***er," Dickinson later added.
Dickinson also made it clear why she agreed to appear in VH1's recently-concluded The Surreal Life 5. "I did it for the money -- it [was] just 12 days," she told the magazine, adding that both her children asked her not to appear on the show.
Dickinson's Top Model dismissal actually marked the second time that she'd been "fired" from reality TV-related program. In 2004, she appeared on American Idol host Ryan Seacrest's short-lived daytime talk show but was dismissed live on the air after shocking Seacrest with her frank sexual innuendo and gestures.
