On this week’s finale of America’s Next Top Model cycle 11, McKey was named the winner. This female boxer started out the season putting up one-dimensional photos in panel but quickly grew into a force to be reckoned with. She became more creative as the weeks went on and turned out high fashion photo after high fashion photo. McKey rocked the runway in Amsterdam, in a Addy van den Krommenacker show, impressing all of the judges. Today, she spoke to BuddyTV in an exclusive interview and could barely contain her excitement about being named America’s Next Top Model.
Below, you will find the transcript and mp3 of the interview.
First of all, congratulations on winning. I’m so happy for you.
Ah! Thank you so much! I know. It’s so great.
Has it even sunk in yet?
Well, it was so rough because you know, we won a while back. I won a while back. It’s kind of like, I never really got a chance to take it in because I had to go home and put on my serious face so nobody would know anything. I felt like this little very misbehaving puppy that I put in the back room and comes out and is all hyper and running all over the place.
Going into that last runway challenge, how confident were you?
Oh man, the only thing that I was confident about was that I was athletic enough to get up the hill. Whether I would look graceful doing it or whether I would slip along the way, I knew not but I knew I would get up the hill.
How difficult was that runway to walk?
The hardest part about the runway was remembering to lift up your skirt every time you went up a little hill because if you left it down, you would step on it and you would slip and you would fall and you would break the dress. Everything would be a catastrophe. Your heel would go and cut some audience member in the face and all the other models would be slipping all over the place so that would be bad.
In that final panel when they look at all of your photos from the whole season, which one is your favorite?
I think, looking back, my favorite photo would probably be the first one just because it just showed who I was. They broke me down so much in that photo shoot where I couldn’t do anything. I was suffering so bad that it just really showed who I was behind the photo versus what I had learned how to do.
What’s the biggest change that you made in the competition?
The biggest change I made in the competition was learning how to conduct myself on set versus just coming on and standing there. The second I walked on set, I examined everything that was around me and everything I could do and I made sure that the photographer and Jay all knew that I was paying attention to my set and I wasn’t expecting any kind of direction from them no matter what. I was going to be doing something and looking like I was trying and kicking butt.
What girls are you the closest to now that the show is over?
Now that the show is over, I am definitely closest to Sheena. Sheena’s done a really good job of keeping in touch and I mean, I talk to Joslyn and I sent emails to a few of the girls but I mean, Sheena gave me a whole tour of New York last night. We’re really connected on a level that goes beyond the show and that goes beyond anything else and no matter what, we’ll stay friends.
Well, I wrote an article on BuddyTV this week that was the most dramatic moments of the season and you weren’t in any of them! How did you stay out of the drama this season?
I never had many girlfriends growing up so I’m just not very versed in how you handle situations like that so I’m just like, “Okay, I’m going to go bake something.” The cultural divide in the house, all the arguing, I was actually sitting there in the pantry baking a cake. You can see it in one of the scenes the next morning when Elina and Sheena are apologizing to each other, kind of just saying it was over. My cake was sitting right there and it was chock full of love. It had all that emotion going on around it. I made sure I knew what was going on but I wasn’t quite sure how to participate in it. I wasn’t quite sure it was worth my energy when I had to perform every day to go out there and yell out a whole bunch of stuff that really wouldn’t matter once the show was over.
Who was the toughest judge to impress this season?
I think it’s a toss-up because it changed as the season went on for me. It started out being Nigel. He was really, really hard to impress. I was so excited to meet him but when I first met him in the interviews, it didn’t seem like he was that impressed with me. He called me shy and it was really kind of sad so I worked really hard to get him on my side. Then, towards the end of the cycle, I felt like it was Paulina. She ‘s expecting more out of me and I felt like they were constantly pushing me to do better and I felt like I needed to prove to them that I could do better.
What is in the future for you now? Have you even started thinking about it?
Oh yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about it. What I really, really want to do long-term is I want to end up in Paris. I want to be walking runways there and working with designers there but in the immediate future, I’m going to move to New York and get a book put together and hopefully, going on castings and getting booked!
– Gina Scarpa, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(Image courtesy of CW)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
