Klum does a twirl, like a gawky-fabulous Gene Kelly. “It’s a beautiful morning…” she starts singing as she bounces towards Gunn, showing off that goofiness and grace that’s made her one of the most mainstream-famous supermodels in fashion history. Her former Project Runway pal, tailored to the nines, greets her with open arms.
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They grasp hands and walk together, so buoyant they could float, to meet the fashion designers who will compete on their ambitious new venture, the Amazon reality series Making the Cut. The reunion is the first scene of the new fashion competition, which launches Friday on the streaming service, two years after Klum and Gunn walked away from Project Runway after 16 seasons.
“You know, Tim and I, we’ve been married for 17 years,” Klum says. “It’s the longest marriage I’ve ever been in. A marriage sometimes goes a little stale. You still love each other, but sometimes you need to just, you know, get a little fresh wind into that marriage. I feel like that’s what we needed.”
Klum and Gunn are connecting via a conference call from their respective self-isolations to discuss that fresh wind.
Making the Cut is arguably the biggest-scale fashion competition the reality TV genre has seen in the nearly two decades since Project Runway first launched. The show whisks already established designers across the world, from New York to Paris to Tokyo, to test their potential to not merely “make it work” in a sewing room, but to become a global fashion brand.
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Each week, winning designs will be made available for purchase on Amazon, all with a price tag of $100 or less. At the end of the competition, the winning designer wins a whopping $1 million to invest in their brand.
The series has all the bones of what has made Klum and Gunn’s alma mater a continued success, but boasts an undeniable level-up in scale, production, and enterprising ambition. As Entertainment Weekly put it in its review, “Making the Cut plays like Project Runway if its rich aunt died and left the show her millions.”
The unusual circumstances under which Making the Cut is being launched are at the forefront of Klum and Gunn’s minds. Both stars say they’re feeling fine and “hanging in there” while diligently social distancing in their homes.
They know the severity of the situation. Earlier this month, Klum announced that she was taking an absence from judging America’s Got Talent after feeling sick, unsure if she was battling a seasonal cold or COVID-19. At the time she wasn’t able to secure a coronavirus test, so she put herself under self-quarantine. On Tuesday, she announced that she had been tested and the result was negative.
It’s not an easy or ideal task to launch the biggest television venture of their careers while under isolation and unable to flex the typical promotional muscle for a show of this size. But the duo also recognizes the opportunity for their project to be a welcome respite, point of distraction, and maybe even source of joy for a population stuck at home, anxious, and desperate to be entertained.
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“I have to say, speaking for Heidi and for me, Making the Cut is such a wonderful antidote to these trying times,” Gunn says. “It’s feel-good television. You see a community being built. You see designers helping each other. It’s really...it’s much needed.” Klum couldn’t agree more: “We’re very proud that we can provide a little positivity and some distraction to everyone.”
With Making the Cut, they’re excited to do something big and ambitious, but they’re grateful to simply be doing something new. Project Runway blasted them out of a cannon to greater levels of fame and opportunity than they ever could have imagined for their careers. But the show was also, as the years went on, frustrating and constraining, and often not an entirely pleasant experience.
They were blindsided when the announcement was made that the show was moving from its second home on Lifetime back to its original network, Bravo. They were two weeks from filming Season 17 when Lifetime’s parent company, A+E Networks, cut ties with The Weinstein Company, which owned Project Runway, amidst the bombshell sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, leaving the show stranded before Bravo picked it up.
The whole thing kind of... sucked. Contracts had to be renegotiated, and weren’t great. The Weinstein storm cloud cast a horrifying shadow over everything. Going back to Bravo, they realized, would be going back to more of the same—and they’ve long had enough of that.
“You know, our brains were always constantly going and wanting to do more and be more relevant,” Klum says. “We always wanted to implement some changes, but we weren't really allowed to.” She lets out one of those exasperated giggles of someone finally revealing a long-held annoyance that’s been weighing on them, but not wanting to seem whiny.
“Heidi and I are extremely proud of Project Runway and its trajectory,” Gunn says. “We had a huge amount of confidence in what we’d already achieved and we thought, you know, let’s throw the dice. Let’s raise the bar here.”