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Top Models don’t blame Sarah Murdoch

"There is absolutely no way it was a stunt. You saw the look on Sarah Murdoch's face. It was devastation," say the girls at the centre of the ANTM blunder.

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The girls at the centre of the Australia’s Next Top Model blunder believe it was all an honest mistake.

While some viewers and media commentary are accusing the show of a stunt, both girls said today that it was a technical error that caused Kelsey Martinovich to be incorrectly announced as winner before Amanda Ware was awarded the prize.

“It was very full on,” Kelsey told Sky News today, “To stand there and go ‘Ok there’s been a miscommunication, it’s all wrong’… I just felt so bad for Sarah Murdoch to have to deliver that information.

“You see Sarah Murdoch’s face drop as she’s listening to someone in her ear, saying ‘It’s not Kelsey, it’s Amanda.’

“I looked at her and thought ‘There’s been a big mistake.’ I just thought I needed to give her a big hug or something,” said Kelsey.

“They say it was a technical difficulty and that’s all we’ve really figured out…. I can’t really remember what happened in those few moments,” said Amanda.

“It was crazy backstage.There was a lot of yelling. We had to be onstage, offstage, there was so much going on… you just don’t know what was going on behind the scenes. It was just crazy. I’m sure they were just under a lot of pressure,” said Kelsey.

Amanda Ware agreed: “It was a genuine, honest mistake. There is absolutely no way it was a stunt. You saw the look on Sarah Murdoch’s face. It was devastation. Sarah Murdoch would never do that to anybody. She’s such a genuine person.”

Afterwards Kelsey said Sarah Murdoch continued to be apologetic.

“She was just apologising. She felt horrible, the fact that she had to deliver that news.”

The story has generated headlines around the world:

LA Times: Can you say, ‘Oops’? Wrong winner crowned on ‘Australia’s Next Top Model’
BBC: Australia’s Next Top Model show crowns wrong winner
Hollywood Reporter: Aussie ‘Top Model’ announces wrong winner
Vancouver Sun: Just shoot me now: Celeb host names wrong winner in Aussie Next Top Model finale
Huffington Post: ‘Australia’s Next Top Model’ Host Announces WRONG Winner On Live TV
Hollywod.com: Wrong Winner Crowned On ‘Australia’s Next Top Model’
Movieline: Buzz Break: Australia’s Next Top Model Isn’t Actually the Top Model

Foxtel apologised to Kelsey for the bungle and is awarding her a trip to New York and $25,000 while Harper’s Bazaar will release magazine covers of both girls.

Morning radio has been debating the saga including who was to blame for the error, whether the show would have had two sets of fireworks or not, the legal ramifications  and whether the girls should have both been declared equal winners.

Even SKY News was asking if it was the most awkward live TV moment in Australian TV history.

Through it all there is much agreement that Kelsey Martinovich conducted herself with grace and humility.

“To be runner up is amazing anyway. I came on the show to get my face out there and get a career out of it. I felt like I’d achieved that anyway,” she said.

20 Responses

  3. I thought they should have completed the show with grace and let Kelsey take the limelight regardless of the stuff-up. She handled it really well, however, there is the probability of her being very upset about it on the inside. Sometimes it’s better to let mistakes go.

  5. @goodyear: “… she has no choice but to take whatever job offer comes her
    way….” You Do recognise the name “Murdoch” dont you? I honestly doubt whether Sarah Murdoch is worried about paying the rent. She probably has lots of concerns about lots of things like all of us, but I dont think it would be true to say she has no choice but to take whatever comes here way.

  6. Theres been some false reporting on the ‘autocue’ issue. Amanda’s name was put on in the autocue as last resort when no one could get the attention of sarah. With pyro’s and crowd there was a lot of nose in the room and it was only when the crowd die down the sarah could hear the the producers in her ear telling hear that she had the wrong winner.

  7. @Goodyear. Do you have any evidence at all to back up what you’re saying? Pretty much all TV hosts have ear-pieces. Teleprompters are only useful for displaying prepared scripts. With the votes being tallied and (presumably) check & re-checked up to the last minute, verbal radio communication is by far the most efficient method to convey information regarding changing circumstances.

    In case you’re interested in facts, Murdoch started modelling comparitively late. Prior to that she was studying ballet at a Sydney performing arts school but switched careers after being told that she was too tall for ballet.

    @Wesley – Yeah, the eventual winner Amanda is such a “stupid blonde” that she has the wrong colour hair.

  8. Goodyear, what live awards show uses an autocue to announce the winner?! it’s clear you have it in for Sarah Murdoch, but the mistake had absolutely nothing to do with her. She was told the winner and she announced it. Then she was told that they’d made a mistake and she had to fix it up on their behalf. From what I can tell, she handled it extremely professionally.

    Back in 2001, Gretel Killeen was handed a blank card when it came time to announce the second last evictee in BB01. She said she had people yelling in her ear, the name was changing constantly and she was left to ad lib on camera and stall until someone told her whose name she had to read out. It happens.

  9. I do not understand how people are calling this a publicity stunt. Why do it in the last 5 minutes of the series, the hype of this will blow over before the next series is on air.

  13. I’m sorry… I just can’t read these comments anymore… It is just getting ridiculous
    Legal action, everyone suing everyone…

    “defintely a stunt. look at allthe publicity it is getting”…

    Or maybe is was just an accident… But because it was embarrassing, and because people like us are reading about it on blogs, they will write more stories to capitalise on the publicity.
    It’s like saying that when a plane crashes, it is obviously staged because the news reports on it afterwards.

    The ANTM brand gets damaged by things like this… It’s not something that they would seriously try to cause.

  14. What do the producers expect when they put a blonde ex-model on
    as the host? If she’s like most models, she probably left school at
    13 years to pursue her modeling career. Now that she’s too old to
    model, she has no choice but to take whatever job offer comes her
    way. Most professional hosts use an auto-cue, but not this girl. She
    has to be prompted what to say via an ear-piece. That’s probably
    because she left school before she learnt to read. Next time I think
    this show will use a professional experienced host.

  15. defintely a stunt. look at allthe publicity it is getting.

    whether or not sarah is acting is irrelevant, is it really that much of a stretch of the imagination that sarah too was sucked in and the person doing the acting was in her ear?

  18. Oh God, you all realise what this is going to mean !!! The Logie writers are going to do this throughout next years show because it is sooooooooooo funny !

    (BTW – yes there are actually people who write the Logies scripts as hard as that is to believe)

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