The Swan was premised on the kind of concept you’d expect from a Black Mirror episode: Women undergo extreme physical transformation to shed their identities as “ugly ducklings” and become beautiful swans, at least in accordance with conventional beauty standards. The first season, which premiered in 2004, averaged more than 9 million viewers an episode. Media critic Jennifer L. Pozner called it “the most sadistic reality series” in her book Reality Bites Back. The show received countless extremely negative reviews received during its run, too. Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, then a critic for Entertainment Weekly, called it “a misogynistic mix of TV’s twin vices: commercialism and conformity.” All of this was perhaps a harbinger for it cancellation, after just two seasons.
Kristy Garza in The Swan: Behind the Mirror —Courtesy of Hulu
Before The Swan could take flight, it needed to cast a crew of willing participants. So the producers behind the show launched an advertising campaign that emphasized the idea of transformation. Prospective contestants would be treated to a cornucopia of all the plastic surgery they could imagine, as well as therapy, life coaching, and personal training.
The Swan held open casting calls all over the country. The show cited figures as high as 200,000 to 250,000 applicants, though Carr says she’s never been able to verify that statistic. “That seems extremely high, given that it was an unknown show,” she says. “One of the tactics used with the swans was, ‘We picked you out of 200,000 people.’ In my opinion, that has a compliance effect. You got chosen above everybody else. You can't say no.” Carr estimates the figure might have been closer to 75,000.
“I knew from the very first conversation that Erin was genuine. She cares about women's stories. She cares about empowering women,” says Garza. “The questions that she asked right off the bat, you could tell she wasn't setting us up for something else,” Bravata adds.
That comfort was created in the details. Carr had each swan choose a song they loved to be their “walk-on” song, to lighten the mood before filming, and a “walk-off” song to celebrate the completion of their interviews.
The dark side of The Swan
Carr recorded accounts from 12 different swans, as well as several producers and one of the show’s plastic surgeons, Dr. Randal Haworth. Carr credits one of the participating swans, Kelly Alemi, with providing essential research materials. Carr recalls that she brought with her to set the “Swan Binder,” which the contestants received at the beginning of filming and detailed what they would experience, as well as Alemi’s personal calendar from the reality show. “It was this calendar with German Shepherds on it,” recalls Carr. “And she had written ‘pain’ day after day on the calendar. I saw that and thought, ‘That really epitomizes part of this experience.’”
The first season threw the contestants one surprise after another. The first was that when the swans arrived to stay in the apartments they’d be living in for the next three months, all the mirrors and reflective surfaces had been removed. For three months, they wouldn’t be able to look at themselves.
It was in that downtime when the swans really got to know each other. They became one another’s support systems and began to form a genuine sisterhood. They commiserated over promises the show made and then underdelivered on. “I only got three therapy sessions,” remembers Garza, “but all they wanted to talk about was my relationship. I was like, ‘Am I here for me, or am I here for my relationship?’" The so-called life coaching, Garza says, was little more than someone berating them and telling them how fat they still were. And as they began to lean on each other more and more, it turned out the producers had a huge twist up their sleeves: The swans weren’t just undergoing big physical changes—they were going to compete with one another in a pageant. The women learned this just before the dramatic moment on screen when they finally saw their transformed selves for the first time. “We were each other’s cheerleaders. They said we’re going to be pitted against each other, and only one of you moves on,” remembers Garza. “I was absolutely shocked. You gave me all of this to build me up, and then you immediately took it away. It was very debilitating from a mental-health standpoint.”
Kari and Gina discuss their experience of a bait and switch on the reality show —Courtesy of Hulu
For Bravata, who participated in Season 2, the audition process was different. Casting for the second season began while the first season was airing, and it was actually her sister Gina who began the application process. Gina had seen in an ad on Craigslist that the production was looking for sisters, so she reached out. When she received an enthusiastic response, the sisters officially applied together. But only Kari would get on the show.
But that wasn’t the end of the sisters’ story on the show. It turned out Bravata wasn’t going to be the only sister competing on The Swan. Gina was going with her. But Gina’s participation was to be kept a secret—one the entire season hinged on. “The second I drive away, they turn the camera on Gina and tell her, ‘You’re going to be there, and your sister doesn’t know.’ And then they threaten her for the next three months of the show that she’ll be liable for $5 million if she breaks the secret. She has to make sure I don’t find out,” Bravata says.
An unexpected upside
The most remarkable thing about The Swan: Behind the Mirror is that this isn’t the tragic story you’d anticipate. Though the reality show was predicated on the entertainment value of tearing women apart, Behind the Mirror shows an aftermath in which the opposite outcome somehow came to fruition. Through the stories of these resilient women, Carr crafts a larger narrative of sisterhood.
But before that moment comes a deeply touching reunion between the swans. Though they talk constantly through group chats and Facebook groups, they live scattered across the United States and don’t often get to see each other in person. But Carr’s film granted them the opportunity to come together and reconnect over their shared experiences. Their simple joy in being with one another is a surprising moment of warmth in the film. The ladies cheer to “tits, teeth, and trauma,” and “to being enough.” This collective scene was essential, for Carr, to show audiences how an unexpected positive came from such a harrowing experience. Pulling it off was no small feat. “Most networks will say, ‘You get three characters. We cannot follow 12 different people,’” says Carr. “So I said, ‘Hey, if we’re doing this, I need to follow everybody. We all need to be interviewed, and then I need for them to come together and do a reunion.’ That is extremely expensive. I was not sure if it was going to be a yes, but that was my dream. And when your dream is realized as a documentarian or filmmaker of any kind, you feel extremely special.”
There was one question I still had to ask the swans: Would Bravata and Garza, despite everything, do it all again?
By and large, the swans didn’t regret the plastic surgery. Many of them were happy with the results, and all of them went on the show because they wanted the operations. The documentary does detail that some of the work they had done hasn’t been as successful as it was originally envisioned to be, and the dentist who performed the dental surgeries ultimately had her license suspended. Still, the biggest problem for the swans was in how they were treated, and how they were presented on screen. “It made us look really weak, and made us look like broken women,” Garza reflects. “I used to joke that I’d rather tell people I had an STI than admit I was on The Swan because of the way it was edited.”
Adds Garza: “In the original fairy tale of the Ugly Duckling, it turned out that it was a swan the whole time. It was just in the wrong nest.”
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