If you’re a fan of reality competition shows like Project Runway and Top Chef, you’re not going to want to miss Shear Genius.
As Runway is to fashion design and Chef to restaurant cooking, Genius pits 12 top hairdressers against each other in a series of elimination challenges until only one of them remains: the Shear Genius. Now in its third season, the US-produced Bravo must-see airs Saturdays with repeats Sundays on Slice. The fur often flies.
This time around, contestants from around the world have been allowed to enter including 26 year-old Amy Michleb of Whitby of all places. She and her husband also own two salons in Thornhill, with two more in the works, one in Woodbridge, the other at Yonge and Eglinton. How did she get on the show?
“I’m a fan of the show and I do a lot of work in the US, trade shows, that sort of thing,” says Michleb who also flogs a line of high-tech scissors. “So, I’d met a lot of the contestants from previous seasons. They told me what an amazing experience it was.
“It’s definitely a different kind of reality show from some of them,” says Michleb who won the first episode challenge with by giving a punk-rocker an exaggerated asymmetrical bob.
“You’re not in it to be bitchy or nasty to other people. You’re around a bunch of very accomplished professionals and everyone learns from everybody other. But it was a lot of fun, the biggest challenge I’ve ever come across. Well, next to my five week-old baby.”
Unlike Genius’ first two series which featured ex-Charlie’s Angel Jaclynn Smith as the host, the current series is helmed by lispy Brazilian supermodel Camilla Alves, better known as the mother of Matthew McConaughey’s two children. Did the buff shirt-less Hollywood hunk ever show up on the set?
“Of course, he did!” laughs Michleb followed by what can only be described as the mating sounds of a female moose.
Shear Genius can be seen on Slice (Rogers 41) Saturdays at 11 am and 5 pm, Sundays at 3 and 10 pm, and Mondays at 4 am.[rssbreak]
