A deal to develop a gleaming new New York skyscraper expected to rise higher than the Empire State Building was finalized on October 21.

Ken Griffin, chief executive of hedge fund Citadel LLC, has joined forces with Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin, the commercial real estate firm, to lead development of the 62-story tower at 350 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Foster + Partners is designing the project.

According to the New York Post, Griffin’s global investment firm will serve as the anchor tenant, taking approximately 1.05 million square feet on one of New York’s most celebrated avenues.

“Foster + Partners is working closely with Citadel and real estate developer Vornado Realty Trust to design and build New York’s most innovative addition to the workplace market,” Nigel Dancey, head of studio at Foster + Partners, said in a press release.

Plans for the office tower were unveiled in May 2024, while the New York City Council unanimously approved construction in September 2025.

The Park Avenue skyscraper is expected to exceed 1,400 feet in height. It will stand just one foot below One Vanderbilt, positioning it as Midtown’s second-tallest office building while still rising above the Empire State Building.

According to New York YIMBY, the supertall development has acquired up to $150 million in air rights from St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Saint Bart’s Church.

The project will also provide more than $35 million for the East Midtown Public Realm Improvement Fund.

“With its stepped-back, gently tapering form, the building follows in the tradition of distinctive towers along Park Avenue, creating a silhouette that is very much ‘of New York,’” Dancey wrote.

The development will include a 112,500-square-foot outdoor plaza, 16,000 square feet of retail space at street level, a cafe facing East 51st Street and a restaurant along East 52nd Street.

“The tower is conceived as a series of glass flutes that maximize light and views out to Manhattan and offer large-span workspaces that benefit from the absence of corner columns,” Dancey wrote.

Alongside the development agreement, the project team has secured a $3.3 billion construction loan to finance the Park Avenue tower.

The financing could rank among the largest construction loans ever issued for a single New York City building.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, BMO Bank, ING Capital, PNC Bank and Standard Chartered Bank are providing the loan.

The demolition of the old 350 Park Avenue 30-story building has started in preparation for the new construction as it is expected to be completed in 2032. 

The Daily Mail has reached out to Foster + Partners, Vornado Realty Trust, Rudin and Citadel LLC for comments. 

A mystery actor was spotted arriving at Bray Studios in Berkshire on Saturday as auditions for the next James Bond continued.

Callum Turner began his screen test for 007 on Friday, as producers narrow their search to the final three contenders.

The 36-year-old is up against strong competition from Slow Horses star Jack Lowden, The Crown actor Josh O’Connor and Australian star Jacob Elordi, who is rumoured to be in contention for the role despite earlier reports that he had been ruled out.

Security staff were seen escorting a Mercedes from Bray Studios on Saturday afternoon, prompting speculation that a leading actor had arrived to audition as the next James Bond.

The Bond screen tests are reportedly continuing throughout the weekend, with between three and five actors believed to have reached the final stages of the casting process.

A source told the Daily Mail: ‘Daniel Craig’s replacement has been years in the making and Callum was called today (Friday) to have his chance to impress the bosses. The next three days are going to be very interesting indeed.’

Bray Studios is a historic production facility on the River Thames and was used for films including The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Amazon MGM Studios, which now controls the Bond franchise, acquired the site in 2024.

Turner’s audition marks a significant moment in the search for Daniel Craig’s successor, a process that has been under way for almost a decade.

The Emma actor, who married pop star Dua Lipa earlier this year, has long been viewed as the leading candidate to take on the iconic spy role.

Scottish actor Lowden and O’Connor, both 36, have emerged as more recent names linked to the race. Elordi, 29, is also reportedly being considered—a prospect that may frustrate traditionalists who believe James Bond should be played by a British actor.

Bond producer Amy Pascal indicated in August that the long-running casting process was nearing its conclusion, saying: ‘I would say the end of the year is a good bet.’

A casting decision by December would give Amazon MGM Studios the opportunity to begin production on the next Bond film in 2027.

Denis Villeneuve, the director of Dune who is attached to lead the project, and Amazon executives announced in May that the search for the new 007 had begun.

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Ms Pascal said: ‘We are being really, really methodical. Having worked with Barbara Broccoli at the studio, I mean, Daniel Craig is a hard act to follow.’

And it’s got to be something really different that is stirring and exciting and different.’

Other stars who were previously linked with the role include The King’s Man star Harris Dickinson, along with SAS: Rogue Heroes’ Jack Barton.

Only six actors have ever played novelist Ian Fleming’s British Secret Service agent 007 in the official film series – Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.

Arizona Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari has reportedly been linked to a political influencer whose organization is under investigation by the House Oversight Committee, where she recently began serving.

Ansari, 34, is said to be romantically involved with Jack Cocchiarella, 24, a progressive political commentator who faced sexual assault allegations while attending Dartmouth. Cocchiarella denied wrongdoing, later filing a lawsuit over the claims.

Cocchiarella has interviewed prominent political figures including California Governor Gavin Newsom and Senator Bernie Sanders. He also hosted Ansari on his program several months ago, with reports suggesting their relationship became romantic after that appearance.

Neither Ansari nor Cocchiarella has publicly confirmed the nature of their relationship. However, the organization Cocchiarella co-founded told the Daily Mail that he had stepped down to prevent reports about “his relationship with a member of Congress” from becoming a distraction.

When the reports emerged, Ansari said she would not discuss her personal life, describing it as private. Her committee is examining what has been characterized as a “dark money operation” connected to Cocchiarella and alleged to provide influencers with monthly payments of up to $8,000 to promote Democratic talking points.

“Right now, ICE is terrorizing communities across the country with zero accountability, and Trump’s reckless war in Iran continues raging on,” Ansari said.

“I’m focused on helping to flip the House so we can pass meaningful legislation—that’s what we should all be focused on.”

Ansari is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In January, she said she was “beyond humbled” to join the panel and vowed to use the position to “fight for transparency and accountability.”

Ansari entered the US House of Representatives in 2025, becoming the youngest woman then serving in Congress and the first Iranian American Democrat elected to the chamber.

She attended Stanford University and the University of Cambridge before beginning her political career in Arizona. Ansari later served on the Phoenix City Council and as the city’s vice mayor before winning a seat in Congress.

Cocchiarella is a prominent progressive YouTuber and helped establish Chorus, an influencer initiative now being examined by Congress.

YouTuber and podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen is identified on the Chorus website as the group’s founder and leader. Cocchiarella had also been listed as a participant in its Creator Council program.

The program accepts applications from creators and social media influencers, offering training and monthly stipends for a six-month period.

In a video describing Chorus, Cohen said its participants include left-wing, progressive, moderate and nonpartisan commentators.

Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in May that he had subpoenaed records connected to Chorus.

A spokesperson for the organization told the Daily Mail that Cocchiarella left the council after TMZ reported on his alleged relationship with Ansari. According to the outlet, the two met in 2025 after Ansari appeared on his show and later became friends.

“The relationship presented no conflict of interest or other concerns, but Jack did not want the story to become fodder for further baseless attacks or distract from Chorus’s work,” the representative said.

The statement continued that the inquiry launched by the Oversight Committee ‘is part of a broader effort to intimidate independent news creators and chill speech. 

‘Chorus is proud to work with the creators who inform the American public about the issues that shape their lives, and the organization will continue that work without hesitation.’ 

An archived version of Chorus’s website also lists Cocchiarella as a member of the Creative Council; however, it appears he has since been removed. 

Last summer, Cohen shared a video on X about Chorus. Cocchiarella shared it and praised the effort, writing: ‘Brian is the best guy I know in this space and I back him with everything I’ve got. 

‘No one has worked harder or done more to build out independent progressive media and he never gets a thank you for it because he doesn’t ask or need it. BTC is a fighter we should all be behind,’ Cocchiarella said.  

The House Oversight Committee accused Chorus of being a ‘dark money operation involved in efforts to undermine media ethics standards and circumvent federal campaign finance disclosure laws,’ according to a press release.

The investigation began last November after Wired reported that Chorus approached a slew of popular influencers to bolster Democratic messaging for $8,000 a month. 

Creators told Wired that Chorus prohibited them from publicly acknowledging they were part of the program or criticizing others who were. 

The report also noted a Zoom call where a lawyer for the nonprofit, Graham Wilson, told creators: ‘There are some real great advantages to … housing this program in a nonprofit.’

‘It gives us the ability to raise money from donors. It also, with this structure, it avoids a lot of the public disclosure or public disclaimers—you know, “Paid for by blah blah blah blah’—that you see on political ads. We don’t need to deal with any of that. Your names aren’t showing up on, like, reports filed with the FEC.”‘

Wilson later clarified that creators can work with whoever they want outside the Chorus program. 

Following the reporting, Comer sent a letter on behalf of the Oversight Committee to President of the Sixteen Thirty Fund Amy Kurtz. 

The letter requested all contracts, documents and communications regarding operations at Chorus. In May, the committee sent Kurtz another letter with a subpoena. 

Comer alleged that the Sixteen Thirty Fund had initially provided ‘improperly redacted document productions’ before the subpoena. The House investigation is ongoing. No official hearings have been held on the matter. 

Cocchiarella was previously embroiled in controversy when his peers accused him of sexual assault while he was a student at Dartmouth. The allegations did not escalate to a criminal case, and Cocchiarella has denied any wrongdoing.

The Columbia Spectator reported on the allegations after he transferred to Columbia University in the fall of 2022. 

An alleged victim told the New Hampshire Journal at the time that he inappropriately touched her and said ‘a lot of really misogynistic things,’ which made her scared. 

Cocchiarella then filed a lawsuit against a Dartmouth student, accusing him of launching a politically motivated ‘smear campaign,’ according to a civil complaint filed in the New Hampshire District Court.

The parties resolved the case in mediation and settled it at the end of 2022. Cocchiarella has never been the subject of an official investigation and has repeatedly denied all allegations. 

The political influencer first rose to fame when he was filmed questioning former Representative Madison Cawthorn at a campus event.

Cocchiarella has since appeared multiple times as a cable news commentator and has over one million YouTube subscribers. 

The Daily Mail has reached out to Ansari, her office, Cocchiarella and the Sixteen Thirty Fund for comment. 

Netflix viewers have been stunned by The New Stanford Prison Experiment, a recreation of the controversial 1971 psychological study.

The original experiment divided 24 male American college students into two groups of 12: prisoners and guards. However, the guards’ treatment became so abusive that researchers ended the study after only six days.

Netflix’s six-part series revisits the experiment with 30 participants — eight guards and 22 inmates — in an attempt to explore the same fundamental question: does power corrupt?

The streaming service has defended the programme, saying a number of safeguards were introduced to protect those taking part. That explanation, however, has done little to quiet the backlash.

USA Today called the series ‘depraved’, adding: ‘Stanford pretends to be some kind of revolutionary experiment out to find some universal truth about humanity, but it is no different than The Traitors in prison jumpsuits.’

The Guardian described the show as ‘insulting’, writing: ‘This rehash of the notorious study in which volunteers role-play as prisoners and guards pretends to be science. It isn’t – it’s patronising reality television.’

The Sydney Morning Herald went even further by labelling it ‘repellent’, although the newspaper also conceded: ‘It’s also one of the most thought-provoking shows I’ve seen.’

As The New Stanford Prison Experiment airs, we revisit some of the most shocking and eyebrow-raising reality shows that would never be made today…

Susunu! Denpa Shonen 

The 1998 Japanese programme Susunu! Denpa Shonen, also known as Do Not Proceed, Crazy Youth, saw one contestant stripped naked, deprived of food and kept in isolation for a year.

Tomoaki Hamatsu, a 22-year-old aspiring comedian, was stripped of his possessions and clothing before being left alone with only magazines, postcards, water, electricity and heating. His task was to enter mail-in magazine competitions until he won one million yen, worth around £6,000.

Tomoaki — who had never signed a contract — was told he could walk away whenever he wanted. Instead, he chose to continue, remaining in the challenge for a total of 15 months.

He believed the footage would be broadcast on television at a later date. In reality, he was unaware that his ordeal was being shown live to approximately 17 million viewers each week.

Winning prize money was not enough. Tomoaki also had to earn everything required for daily life, including food, clothes and toilet paper.

His meals included humiliating portions such as 5kg of uncooked rice. By the 80th day, he had been driven to eating wet dog food.

The isolation eventually took a serious toll on Tomoaki’s mental health, and he admitted that he had wished for death. To preserve his sanity, he wrote diaries, danced and played games.

The live broadcast formed one segment, titled A Life In Prizes, within the wider programme, which featured ordinary people attempting a series of bizarre and extreme challenges.

Speaking to The Sun, he said: ‘The loneliness affected me much more than not being able to eat or not having clothes.

‘There were so many moments where I thought it probably would be better to die now than keep going.

‘The toughest moment was when the rice ran out and I needed to face up to eating dog food. I didn’t want to eat it but there was no alternative.’

Tomoaki admitted that he was in ‘such emotional turmoil that I couldn’t sleep’ and at points even hallucinated to the extent he believed he had been ‘abducted by aliens’.

In his diaries, he wrote: ‘I don’t have enough nutrition going to my brain. Being driven to the edge has brought out a madness in me.’

When he finally reached the number of winnings needed, Nasubi was eventually freed – but producers soon conned him into returning to the hellish experience.

He was flown to what he thought was a celebratory trip to Korea – where the producers worked for three hours to convince him to go through the process again. 

Tomoaki pleaded: ‘I thought my life was over. So many times I wanted to die.’

He ended up competing for several more weeks, taking him to 434 days in isolation.

The contestant then returned to Japan, where he entered another apartment and stripped naked, thinking he was about to be subjected to the same turmoil again.

But the walls then collapsed to reveal a TV studio with a live audience of fans, with him becoming aware for the first time that his ordeal had been seen by millions.

He had become an icon during his long ordeal, with the Truman Show-esque programme poking fun at him with slapstick noises and suggestive censoring. 

‘Without his knowledge or consent’, as the BBC iPlayer synopsis explains, ‘Nasubi became the most famous television personality in Japan.’ 

As well as the record-breaking viewing figures, his diaries from inside also became a best-seller. 

There’s Something About Miriam 

There’s Something About Miriam was one of the most controversial reality TV shows of the early 2000s. 

The 2004 Sky One show saw six ‘typical lads’ enter a dating contest to woo Mexican model Miriam Rivera for a £10,000 prize and romantic yacht trip. 

However, the cruel twist of the show was that the contestants weren’t told that Miriam was transgender and hadn’t undergone gender-affirming surgery until after the winner was announced – and after the men had flirted with her and even filmed intimate scenes together. 

Despite being promised the ‘adventure of a lifetime’, the boys sued the show and prevented it from airing, eventually settling for an amount rumoured to be around £500,000. 

The dating show and its impact have since been explored in a Channel 4 documentary Miriam: Death Of A Reality star, which explores the life and tragic death of Miriam Rivera.

Miriam passed away in Mexico in 2019 aged just 38, and her death was ruled a suicide by the authorities – although her husband Daniel Cuervo has always insisted she was murdered. 

The fates of the six young men are less well known – and most hoped to fade from the spotlight after feeling ‘duped’ by TV executives and the world of fame. 

But the others have gone on to forge interesting careers since the show, with winner Tom Rooke – then a lifeguard – branching out into acting, while one even dated Kerry Katona. 

Fat Families

Sky One’s Fat Families may only have aired for two series in 2010 but Gen Z have revived the programme with horrified youngsters sharing clips on TikTok. 

The show had a cult following due to host and ‘former fatty’ Steve Miller’s approach to weight loss in which he refused to pander to any excuses and would instead go as far to insult the participants.

Steve would spend 24 hours with the overweight families as he monitored their diet and lifestyle choices before issuing them with a healthy living plan that would always result in weight loss. 

He revisited the families to check on their progress in season two of the show, Fat Families: Second Helpings.  

Yet motivational speaker Steve, who lost four stone after becoming overweight, didn’t hold back with his use of language, telling viewers he was about to encounter ‘one of the fattest families I’ve ever met in my life’ who are ‘grazing their way to an early grave’. 

Other examples of shock outbursts saw him brand family members ‘right beached blubber bellies’ and ‘Mr and Mrs Massive Fatty’. 

While he also famously uttered ‘Watch out massive fatties, the lard police are in town!’

Supersize v Superskinny 

Channel 4’s Supersize v Superskinny aired from 2008 to 2014 and saw underweight participants with a dangerously low BMI matched up with someone who was morbidly obese.

 The two were brought to ‘the feeding clinic’ where they lived together for five days and ate each other’s diets under the supervision of Dr Christian Jessen. 

After the experiment they would follow a healthy eating plan for three months before returning for a final weigh-in and health screening.

Critics argued that replacing one unhealthy diet for another in the feeding clinic was taking an unnecessary risk with the contestants’ health, to which Channel 4 replied that this all takes place under the supervision of medical experts. 

It was also accused of being ‘triggering’ for eating disorder sufferers, with chief executive of B-eat, Susan Ringwood, saying: ‘They’re deadly, not entertainment.’ 

The show introduced a section in which they featured people suffering from eating disorders who were overseen by a specialist psychiatrist and dietitian Ursula Philpot.

I Wanna Marry Harry

American women who were duped into believing they were dating Prince Harry in an unsettling TV show have since said producers fed them false information to ‘skew reality’.

I Wanna Marry Harry was a Fox reality show that aired for one season in May 2014, which followed 12 American women who believed they were competing for a chance to date Prince Harry. Instead, however, it was a lookalike named Matthew Hicks. 

Ten years later the former contestants spoke out in the podcast The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace and claimed they were monitored  24/7 with cameras in bedrooms and ordered not to speak to each other off camera. 

The winner of the series Kimberly Birch and other contestants Meghan Jones and Chelsea Brookshire lifted the lid on the controversial reality TV series. 

The contestants underwent psychological evaluation with a psychologist before being flown from the US and taken to Englefield House, an Elizabethan country home in Berkshire.  

While contestants on the show weren’t told that the suitor they were fighting for was Prince Harry at first, they were all made to believe it was him thanks to Matthew’s strikingly similar looks to the Duke of Sussex and production crews ‘breadcrumbing’ fabricated stories. 

The women all said they were told they were joining a show called ‘Dream Date’ and knew little else when they were whisked off to England, where they spent three days isolated in hotel rooms without any access to the outside world, not even books. 

At the time of the show’s premiere, Prince Harry was years away from meeting his wife, Meghan Markle. He still had his bad-boy reputation and was – most importantly – single as he had just ended his relationship with Cressida Bonas. 

Speaking to journalist Scott Bryan on the podcast, Kimberly said: ‘They started off really subtly, they had Kelly discover a newspaper article on a coffee table about Prince Harry, I don’t remember what it said but I remember her telling the rest of us, and one of the staff came and took it away from her.’

Meghan added: ‘I remember the production kind of laying these Easter Eggs for us to find, I tried to figure out what their agenda was.’ 

Kimberly explained: ‘There was a night were we had security outside of our rooms and one of the security guards told a producer ”we have to get him back to the palace, there is a situation there with the royal family’,’ so whatever was heard, it suggested something that you weren’t supposed to hear.

Meghan added: ‘Production came out and said ”stop filming, stop filming, this is very serious”, so without camera’s on, they gathered all of us girls and producers in Kim and I’s room and they told us, ”Your safety is at the utmost importance to us, we are dealing with someone who is a high target individual”, I thought that was their most impactful trick.

‘I didn’t think they would do anything off camera that would be that shady, so I thought they were actually being realistic.’

Meghan explained that production kept ‘close tabs’ on them, claiming they were being monitored 24 hours a day, saying they had cameras in their bedrooms and they were ‘mic’d up all day’. 

She added: ‘They really kept tabs on us, you couldn’t just get hungry in the middle of the day, go to the kitchen and grab an apple, even getting water. For a couple of days of filming I started stealing the digestives they had at breakfast and putting them in my bra, I would take them to my room and hid them in my sock drawer.’

Many of the girls mentioned that they were not allowed to speak to each other unless cameras were rolling, it was called ‘put on ice’.

Kimberly said the show taught her a lot about ‘brainwashing’ because her reality was constantly being skewed.

One of the contestants, Kelly, fell hard for the man she thought was Prince Harry, so much that even the imposter Matthew started to feel uneasy about the lie. 

Matt said he only agreed to do the show if he didn’t have to flat-out lie to the women. He was told to act like himself, not a royal, but that didn’t stop others from nudging the women’s speculation along. 

The show even went as far as staging paparazzi chases and security threats to make the women believe they were dating Prince Harry.

Viewers watched on as the women went on a series of lavish dates with the man whom they believed to be the Prince.

Matt, who is now a father and working as a school teacher, also spoke to the podcast about his time on the show, saying it was the most ‘nerve racking’ thing he ever had to do. 

Matt revealed he felt ‘quite isolated on the show’ because the production crew were told to not get too over familiar with him in case they called him by his real name by mistake. 

Even though Matt didn’t feel comfortable with the deception, producers appeared to have other ideas and halfway through the series, when one of the girls got suspicious, the production crew revealed to the women that Matt was indeed Prince Harry.

Matt said: ‘At the time I had no idea they were going to do that. I was a bit miffed and felt quite stressed, I didn’t appreciate the way they done it without telling me, but then again I signed up for this, I knew it might happen at some point.

‘I only had one option really and that was to just deal with it, so I just carried on the same way really and played it like it didn’t happen.’

At the end of the show Kimberly won Matt’s heart but he had to break the news that he wasn’t Prince Harry like the girls had been led to believe. 

In a bizarre twist, that none of the contestants or Matt knew about, Kimberley was in with a chance to win $300,000, but only if she still accepted Matthew after he revealed he wasn’t the Prince.

After winning, she split the prize with Matthew, and after a few show-related meetups, they went their separate ways. 

The show was ultimately pulled from the air after only four episodes due to low ratings. The rest premiered on Fox’s website. 

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Playing It Straight 

Just last year controversial dating show Playing It Straight set tongues wagging online a whole 20 years after it first aired.

The now-cancelled TV series – which first aired back in 2005 – originally broadcast on Fox in the US, but quickly picked up a UK version.

Fans on X have since rediscovered the gameshow, with one claiming that ‘it got homophobic so quickly’.

The series was hosted by American television presenter Daphne Brogdon, with Jameela Jamil presenting the UK spin-off alongside and comedian Alan Carr, who narrated it.

The British series aired in 2005 and ran until 2012, with June Sarpong presenting it from 2005 and Jameela in 2012.

The original series saw one woman forced to pick a partner from 14 attractive bachelors, but the twist is that half of the men are gay.

If the woman in question picked a straight man, they split a $1million prize. 

But if a gay man fooled her, he would get to keep the eye-watering cash to himself.

On X, user Corsaren shared a thread of thoughts about the US series, which ran for one season and had a total of eight episodes.

It focused on single girl Jackie, who was looking for her perfect partner, and completely unaware of the plot twist.

They wrote: ‘Who do I have to pay to bring this show back on the air holy s**t,’ adding, ‘I’d say there is at least a 30% chance at this point that the twist is they’re all gay.’

Further elaborating on the episode, they shared: ‘Oh good, they are now competing with each other to prove how straight they are by talking about her t**s as aggressively as possible lol.’

Contestant Gust was first to get kicked off the show, which appeared to get worse as it went on.

The X user claimed it was before bosses started to ban alcohol on shows, as one of the contestants was ‘intentionally tricking another to take too many tequila shots’.

The Swan 

Just a few months ago a woman who went under the knife on one of the most controversial American makeover shows has revealed how she was scarred for life from the series. 

The Swan, which ran for two seasons from 2004 on US network Fox, saw a group of  women participate in a pageant after undergoing a three-month transformation.

The everyday women, titled ‘ugly ducklings’ would go under the knife, have their diets overhauled and their wardrobes completely changed in order to become beauty queens. 

The three-month experiment gave women access to a therapist, dentist, cosmetic surgeon and a personal trainer in order to become more conventionally attractive. 

The winner of the beauty pageant at the end of the series would be dubbed ‘The Swan’ – there was no cash prize for them to take home. 

While it drew in a huge 15 million viewers on its launch, it received mostly negative reviews from critics, who hit out it was ‘misogynistic’ and ‘hurtful’, leading to its downfall just months after its initial release.

And since, a small handful of women who took part in the series have spoken out about the not-so-pageant-ready after effects, with one even citing surgery complications and mental health problems, of taking part in the show. 

It led to Entertainment Weekly ranking the programme the worst reality show ever produced, and VICE featuring it in their documentary, Dark Side of Reality TV, calling it the most ‘bizarre and offensive reality TV show of all time’. 

Now, one former contestant, Belinda Bessant, has opened up on her horror experience on the show, admitting it left her with scars on her face, and regrets over being pushed towards some surgeries. 

Speaking to Mel Magazine, the former reality star admitted she signed up for the series after an advert appeared during an episode of The Price Is Right. 

Advertising an opportunity to ‘change her life’, she admitted she ‘didn’t hesitate to see what it was all about’ having struggled with depression as a single mother. 

Four months after being cast in the show, she was flown to Los Angeles to be given ‘medical and psychological tests’ to ensure she was fit for the show. 

Two months later, Belinda recalled the cameras showing up at her house and being whisked away from her home to begin the process.

She told the publication: ‘This was back in the heyday of reality TV: Everybody dreamed of being on some type of TV show… a lawyer who who looked at the show’s contract tried to tell me I shouldn’t sign it, but I did anyway because the allure of being on reality TV was too exciting to turn down.’

Belinda was forced to leave her house, job and children behind for four months as part of the process – sending them the $500 (£380) she was paid each week for being on the show.

She was encouraged to go under the knife, with the single mother opting for an eye surgery known as a Blepharoplasty, face and body liposuction, a breast reduction and veneers.

Belinda continued: ‘All of the surgeries were within the first two weeks; my first operation was 13 hours under anesthesia, and my second was one week later.’

During the women’s recoveries, they were not allowed to access TV, mainstream media or buy magazines, with once-a-week calls home limited to ten minutes.

Instead, the women were ‘chaperoned’ everywhere and kept ‘trapped in their own world’ until the filming had finished and the pageant had aired on screens. 

Right up until the moment the women walked out for the pageant, the true competitive nature of the show was kept ‘secret’ from the women. 

While Belinda accepts that some of the surgeries she had have helped her in her life, she admitted to having regrets for those that left her with ‘scars’ and ‘hair loss’. 

‘The before pictures were made to make us look as ugly as possible,’ she continued. ‘I had beautiful eyebrows and eyes, I wasn’t unhappy with my face structure… today you can see three vertical scars on my head, which are made worse by the hair loss.’

Belinda stressed that she feels ’embarrassed more than anything’ to tell people she was on the show, after the ‘editing’ made her look ‘obsessed with looks’. 

She concluded that ‘to this day she doesn’t talk about it’, because she doesn’t want ‘negativity’ from the series involved in her life. 

Scenes on the show, which first aired in 2004, saw Belinda explain the reasons why she took to the series, admitting she ‘used to be pretty’.

In the episode, she told the cameras: ‘I’m 28 years old, I used to have the perfect body, and I used to be pretty and I used to be able to walk down the street and have guys chasing me. Not having that now, it makes me feel horrible.

‘Unfortunately I ended up with the wrong guy, I wouldn’t want to talk to any of the men from my past because they are not good people. I ended up in several abusive relationships.

‘My dream for myself is to learn to know that I deserve someone who will treat me good, but when I look in the mirror, I see a big fat cow.’

On her emotional reveal, Belinda told the show’s hosts: ‘One thing I’ve learned here is that beauty comes from the inside and I’m happy with who I am right now.’

Secret Eaters

Channel 4’s Secret Eaters ran from 2012 to 2015 and saw host Anna Richardson get to the bottom of baffled contestants who couldn’t figure out why they were overweight.

Using secret cameras and private investigators they would then be followed without their knowledge and have all the food they consumed recorded.   

At the end of the week, they were confronted about what they had eaten, shown footage of them eating and told how many calories they had consumed while looking at a giant table filled with all the meals they’d consumed in the week. 

A press release promoting the programme said: ‘Britain has become a nation of mindless munchers and compulsive grazers. 

‘Many people don’t even know they’re doing it and are losing the battle of the bulge because of it.  

‘These families can’t understand why their diets are out of control; they think they are eating healthily but can’t stop piling on the pounds.

‘To find out what they’re really consuming, cameras are put in their shopping trolleys, cars, fridges and cupboards.’

The show was criticised for bringing an element of ‘shame’ around eating, as well as the hidden camera element. 

Mini segments within the show would film unsuspecting members of the public dining, before they were confronted with the reality of how many calories were in their meals.

 America’s Next Top Model

America’s Next Top Model – which aired for 24 seasons spanning 2003-2018 on UPN, The CW and VH1 – was notorious for dangerous runway challenges, problematic photo challenges and disastrous makeovers. 

In her ‘fight against the fashion industry’, host Tyra Banks pushed the boundaries of taste on more than one occasion including the infamous swapped ethnicities ‘blackface’ shoot for a Got Milk? ad during cycle 4. 

Contestants have also complained about being fat shamed or forced into undergoing cosmetic procedures on the show. 

Since Tyra has finally addressed the various controversies and scandals in Netflix documentary Reality Check. 

‘I haven’t really said much, but now it’s time,’ the 52-year-old model-turned-presenter admitted. ‘I knew I went too far.’

Tyra continued: ‘It was very, very intense. But you guys were demanding it, so we kept pushing more and more and more.’

Featuring interviews with Banks, former judges Jay Manuel, J Alexander and Nigel Barker, along with past contestants and winners, the series took a candid look at the show’s meteoric rise – and the countless controversies that followed. 

What is The New Stanford Prison Experiment?

Netflix has been slammed online after it revealed that it was turning the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment into a new reality show.

’30 willing participants enter a real prison and are randomly assigned as guards or prisoners,’ reads a description.

‘Thrust into a system of power, hierarchy and control, they’ll discover whether ordinary people inevitably conform to the roles they’re given – or whether empathy, morality and individuality can withstand the forces pushing them in the opposite direction.

‘As the pressure builds and the balance of power begins to shift, the central question feels more urgent than ever: Does power corrupt?’

Executive producer Jane Lipsitz has defended the show, stating: ‘When the show was first announced, there was a lot of outrage that anyone would even attempt the Stanford Prison Experiment again and given what happened with the original, I completely understand that reaction.’

‘If we were simply recreating the original experiment, that would be unconscionable. But this is a different time, with different participants, different safeguards and, ultimately, a very different journey.’

However, the show has been met with fierce backlash online, as many pointed out that the initial 1971 experiment it’s based off of ended in disaster.

Run by psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of the most famous psychological studies of all time. 

Students were randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners within a mock prison constructed in the Stanford Psychology Department.

The objective was to observe the interaction within and between the two groups in the absence of an obviously malevolent authority.

The results proved shocking, with the abuse handed out to the prisoners by the guards so brutal that the study had to be terminated after just six days.

‘Leave it to Netflix to reproduce one of the most notorious and unethical social experiments ever, but as reality TV,’ one user scathed on X following the announcement. 

‘We already know the results of this are bad/harmful/dangerous,’ another added.

‘This is one of the most infamous records of horrific practice, social duress and unsafe living conditions,’ someone else penned. 

‘Psychologists already determined it to be highly unethical and traumatizing. How is this legal? And how is this considered entertainment?’ 

‘This same experiment was ended early last time because “guards” became increasingly abusive and “prisoners” were suffering intense emotional distress,’ read a fourth post. 

‘It was deemed a highly unethical experiment. But sure, let’s make the same terrible mistakes again, for entertainment purposes.’

‘This sounds like a bad idea in every way possible. The real experiment failed miserably,’ said a sixth.

A different user chimed in: ‘This was stupid when it was done in real life. And will probably be even stupider when repeated.’

Many people urged Netflix to ‘cancel’ or ‘pull’ the show before its premiere, while some, on the other hand, confessed that they were excited to watch. 

The New Stanford Prison Experiment is streaming on Netflix