It’s been nearly a decade since Richard Hatch’s fellow competitor on Survivor: Borneo deemed him a snake in the season finale in August 2000. But since then, the reality-TV-made millionaire has continued to slither his way into the headlines. In the immediate aftermath of the show’s premiere season, Hatch made the most of his newfound fame, appearing on Survivor: All Stars, Dog Eat Dog, The Weakest Link, Battle of the Network Reality Stars, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? But five years after emerging victorious and notoriously shedding both pounds and clothing on the show’s Malaysian island, Hatch failed to report the money he had won from Survivor as well as earnings from a Boston radio station on his federal income-tax returns. After being found guilty in 2006, Hatch began his 51-month prison sentence, plus three years of supervised release. Though he tried to appeal and petition his conviction, his efforts were rebuffed. Finally, in May 2009, Hatch was released from jail and prepared to undergo house arrest. But the battle wasn’t over for the constantly cocky personality, who may have outwitted, outplayed, and outlasted his competition, but not the federal courts. After doing interviews with both Access Hollywood and Today, Hatch was re-arrested in August for speaking to the media, but contends that he was prosecuted not for his alleged financial indiscretions, but because of his sexual orientation. Just two months ago, on October 16, Hatch was released from prison after completing his federal sentence.
CBS / Landov; Peter Kramer / NBC NewsWire
Adrianne Curry was (and seemingly still is) all about the ass, whether it was showing hers on television or using it as an expletive with her Midwestern twang. “A lot is going to change and it kicks so much ass!” the then-20-year-old winner of Tyra Banks’ inaugural season said upon becoming America’s first Next Top Model. Since then, Curry has continued to make a name for herself in many facets of the media industry, few of which actually involve modeling—though she did pose for fashion elite collections like Pamela Anderson’s clothing line, Ed Hardy, and Von Dutch. Somehow, she found time to marry Christopher Knight, or as most of us know him, Peter Brady, whom she met while appearing on VH1’s The Surreal Life. The pair’s relationship continued to play out for audiences as they filmed their own celebreality program, My Fair Brady. Curry, a self-proclaimed “international star,” has made a place for herself in pop culture by nastily taking to her MySpace blog over the years, commenting on everyone from mentor Tyra Banks (who is “immature and petty”) to Britney Spears (“She loves herself and her problems more than she cares about her own children”). Though Curry has yet to have any children herself, she does have over 171,000 MySpace friends to keep her company.
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Since she has been gone from the hands of Ryan Seacrest, Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson, native Texan Kelly Clarkson has continuously produced chart-topping hits, despite some professional and personal hiccups along the way. The then-22-year-old American Idol winner was an immediate success on the Billboard charts with “A Moment Like This” and “Miss Independent” in 2002, but an extraordinary flop on the silver screen in From Justin to Kelly with Idol runner-up Justin Guarini. With her signature inked on the dotted line, Clarkson’s hands were tied to a film written by Cowell’s brother. “I knew when I read the script it was going to be real, real bad, but when I won, I signed that piece of paper and I could not get out of it,” she told People. “Two words: contractually obligated.” The now-27-year-old’s aptly titled 2004 album Breakaway went platinum six times over and earned her two Grammy Awards in 2006. The following year, however, with the highly anticipated followup release of My December, rumors erupted about friction between Clarkson and RCA’s Clive Davis. Nevertheless, the public learned that the singer hadn’t written off her career yet in 2009 with her latest album All I Ever Wanted and its first single, “My Life Would Suck Without You.” Though critics continue to analyze her visibly expanding figure and permanent placement on worst-dressed lists, Clarkson’s ability to produce pop hits has been unshakeable.
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The first of Donald Trump’s trainees to hear “You’re hired,” Bill Rancic took the first title on The Apprentice. While his competitor Omarosa may have become the most famous contestant, Rancic was the one who emerged victorious and chose to head up construction of the Trump Tower Chicago in his native Illinois. He continued to appear as a judge on the show’s following seasons and wrote two books You’re Hired and Beyond the Lemonade Stand. Though Rancic experienced his first taste of failure after a brief stint hosting iVillage, his entrée into the media world did lead him to E! News co-host Giuliana DePandi, whom he married in 2007 after leaving the Trump Organization. The following year, Rancic began hosting the A&E channel series We Mean Business, which makes over small companies, and says he hopes to start his own business. “In the years to come,” he told E! Online, “I hope there will be Bill Rancic Towers right alongside Trump Towers.” Though the Rancics are denying reports that they’re starting a family, their relationship is currently chronicled on Giuliana & Bill on Style Network.
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Big Brother, the less-glamorous take on MTV’s The Real World made its way to American audiences from across the pond in 2000. Though the houseguests voted their top two choices to leave the camera-wired abode each week, the rest of the voting was completely left to the public, causing the most controversial contestants to be evicted early in the show and those to whom viewers were most sympathetic to stay. Cue Eddie McGee, the wheelchair-bound basketball player who lost his left leg to childhood cancer. After beating out the nine other Big Brother contestants on its inaugural season, the Long Island native and aspiring actor made the most of his title win and $500,000 monetary earnings. He earned bit parts on Law & Order, Guiding Light, and Desperate Housewives in the aftermath of his Big Brother win. Though McGee disappeared from such small parts on the small screen for a while, he reappeared as the one-legged man in the film The Angel, which won the Best Film honor at the London Sci-Fi Film Festival in 2007. This past year, he’s been back in guest-starring roles on The Philanthropist and The Cleaner. In 2010, McGee is set to play a character of his name in The Human Race, billed by its director/writer as the story of a “surreal and horrifying marathon race,” in which being lapped or stepping off the path results in death. “One hundred will start but only one may cross the finish line alive.” If anyone knows the realities of competition and the sweet taste of victory, it’s certainly McGee.
Bob D'Amico / Reuters; Valerie Macon / Getty Images
As 12 contestants shed pounds and emotional baggage, an American audience shed tears as they sat glued to their TV sets for the premiere season of The Biggest Loser in 2004. With the help of trainer Jillian Michaels, Ryan Benson, a then-36-year-old working in DVD production in Washington state, lost 122 pounds. Benson’s 37 percent loss of his original weight, combined with an 18 percent decrease of his body fat index measurement, lead to his being crowned the original biggest loser and subsequent recipient of a $100,000 cash prize. But Benson hasn’t done much with his newfound frame, fame, and funds in the five years that have followed his win. Two and a half years after his final television weigh-in at 208 pounds, Time reported Benson’s wife had twin girls, but he’s the one who gained the weight. “No one sees me get an apple pie in the drive-through,” said a nearly 300-pound Benson in 2007. The now-41-year-old father took to his MySpace blog in that same year, admitting the frightening truth about his incredible weight loss. “I wanted to win so bad that the last 10 days before the final weigh-in, I didn't eat one piece of solid food,” he wrote of his trial with “The Master Cleanse.” “Twenty-four hours before the final weigh-in, I stopped putting ANYTHING in my body, liquid or solid… By the time of the final weigh-in I was peeing blood.” While Benson hasn’t maintained his weight loss or unhealthy dieting tricks, one thing he has kept is a low profile. He also earned bit parts in Eight Legged Freaks and Lethal Weapon 4 and most recently, in 2008, played a member of a Fat Acceptance Group in the small film Disfigured. Perhaps Jillian, the drill sergeant of the scale, needs to pay him a visit.
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It’s hard to imagine a season of Top Chef without its siren host Padma Lakshmi, but Harold Dieterle, the winner of the show’s first season in 2006, certainly does not forget the pre-Padma series. At just 29, the graduate of the Culinary Institute of America had spent most of his career as executive sous-chef at The Harrison in New York. But after winning the title of Top Chef and $100,000 to start his own restaurant, Dieterle did just that. He opened Perilla Restaurant in New York, inspired by a trip to Thailand in May 2007. The Asian-American West Village restaurant continues to bring Top Chef fans and foodies alike, feasting on his spicy duck meatballs, edamame falafel, and vanilla-scented doughnuts. And though Dieterle and Perilla co-owner Alicia Nosenzo say they are thankful for the exposure the show brought, Nosenzo recently told The Baltimore Sun, “We’re more than that.” Though he won’t be able to shake his notoriety any time soon thanks to Bravo’s hold on previous contestants, Dieterle understands the game. “You’re always going to give something up to get something,” he told The Sun.
Gavin Bond / Bravo / NBCU / AP Images; Jamie McCarthy / WireImage
The first person Heidi Klum, Tim Gunn, Nina Garcia, Michael Kors, and American Project Runway devotees tipped their hat to was Season 1 winner, Jay McCarroll in 2005. The Pennsylvania native was a hit on the Bravo network, earning not only “the opportunity of a lifetime” to show his collection at New York Fashion Week, but also $100,000 to start his own line, and a mentorship with Banana Republic. But after meeting with two representatives from Banana Republic, McCarroll decided to turn down the monetary gift and the mentorship. “That was totally not anything like what I needed,” he told New York magazine. Eventually, the now-35-year-old, more-seasoned designer launched his own designer fashion boutique, The Colony. McCarroll, however, has since said aufweirdersen to New York and moved to Philadelphia. Earlier this year, from the smaller city, he released a documentary entitled 11 Minutes (the average length of a runway show). McCarroll’s also said his farewells to fashion… sort of. “The day Sean Puffy Combs won menswear designer of the year was the day I gave up on fashion in New York,” he told The Daily Beast in February. The skinny on McCarroll’s latest project, however, is no laughing matter. As a contestant on the seventh season of VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club, scheduled to air in January, it’s clear the former-ish fashion designer dropped some serious lbs thanks to a recent Philadelphia Weekly blog post. Fellow Runway alum Austin Scarlett is no longer the only one svelte enough to take the catwalk.
Mark Mainz / Getty Images; Dave Allocca / AP Photo
Before there were Vegas week, Cat Deeley’s micro-mini dresses, and Mary Murphy’s ear-piercing invitations to the “hot tamale train,” Nick Lazzarini won America’s vote and a $100,000 cash prize on the inaugural season of So You Think You Can Dance in 2005. Though he was also awarded a one-year, rent-free Manhattan penthouse, Lazzarini reportedly exchanged the gift for a cash equivalent. The following year, the dancer since age 4 co-founded the Evolution Dance Company and has continued to teach at various conventions with Break the Floor Productions. Over the years, Lazzarini has remained a devoted dancer, but has become less of a fan of the show he won four years ago, he recently revealed in a September interview with fan site SYTYCDism. The former champion says the show now centers around the choreographers and “kookiness,” versus the dancers themselves. As for his own career, Lazzarini dreams of starting his own jazz company and has been taking singing lessons, which he hopes could propel him toward the Broadway stage. In the meanwhile, however, according to his Twitter, the spiky-haired winner is teaching at the Broadway Dance Center in New York. He’s also watching Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, listening to fellow reality-TV contestant Kelly Clarkson, and perhaps regretting allegedly turning down that apartment. On December 11, he tweeted, “Its 530 am there was no hot water at my apt so no shower and bed head. Cute.”
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Rob Frisbee and Brennan Swain shared their law backgrounds, sci-fi nerd-dom, and $1 million prize money after taking home the first title on The Amazing Race in 2001. After traveling through 11 countries in just 31 days, Frisbee and Swain managed to win the series’ first season by a mere 20-minute margin. After their win, the then-31-year-old Swain began taking acting lessons, while Frisbee, 29 at the time, decided to go a different route and self-published two of his own science-fiction novels in 2002, The Meteth Chronicles and A Sea of Time, with his own company Dark House Books. “I have always been a writer,” Swain told his alma mater The Arizona Daily Wildcat that same year. “That’s what my heart is set on.” Apparently, though, not set enough. Since then, Frisbee has seemingly put his writing on the back burner and returned to his original profession, reportedly starting his own law practice. Swain is also practicing law (currently at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro LLP), but continuing to pursue his 15 minutes of fame—he’s been a correspondent for Extra and On Air with Ryan Seacrest. Though the pair has since drifted, they both invested in the reality-TV network, Reality Central. Sadly, the network, launched by The Amazing Race 2’s Blake Mycoskie, who is now the famous Chief Shoe Giver for TOMS, did not succeed and neither has Swain at breaking into the entertainment industry full-time. As for Frisbee, he told MSN.com that after paying off his Harvard Law debts, he gave a “huge chunk of change” to his uncle, who worked at Merrill Lynch. Clearly, neither have had much luck with their earnings.
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With 13 seasons under its belt, The Bachelor contestants have not proven to be the luckiest in love, beginning with its inaugural eligible contestant, Alex Michel in 2002. The Harvard-grad, who was a managing consultant at the time, had 25 women to choose from, but then-23-year-old Marsh, an event planner, was the keeper. Though Michel didn’t propose, he ditched runner-up Trista Rehn, much to most of America’s shock and dismay. In a recent interview, the now-38-year-old New York City media industry exec revealed he fell for Marsh even more so after the show wrapped, but their relationship fizzled after about a year. “It turned out we were never actually a good enough match to get married,” Michel said in an online interview this year. Marsh, however, remembers a different story, telling Inside Edition (via Entertainment Weekly) that Michel slept with Rehn while the series was taping, which was not a rose-worthy act in Marsh’s eyes. Now, Michel has found another woman, Carly, and is a spokesman for Princess Cruises’ “Department of Romance.” Though he serves as their “proposal expert” and has been dating Carly for a few years, he has yet to pop the question in question. But “it’s definitely a possibility,” he told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. Marsh, on the other hand, has seemingly drifted into actual real-world obscurity. According to her local Kansas City newspaper The Pitch in 2006, Marsh was last working in PR for Diagnostic Imaging Centers and engaged to Matt Zender, a Black & Decker salesman in the area. Looks like she finally found a power tool that works for her.
Craig Sjodin / ABC / Getty Images
Trista Rehn may not have had much luck with Alex Michel on The Bachelor, but the runner-up on the first season of ABC’s long-standing reality show was given something even better—the chance to find love on her own terms. As the network’s first Bachelorette, Rehn’s gender-reserved spinoff of the show that broke her heart led her to Ryan Sutter, a Colorado firefighter and former college football player. On December 6, 2003, Rehn was reportedly given $1 million to marry Sutter on television, which drew in more than 26 million viewers. The couple continued to garner attention when, in 2005, Rehn appeared on the first season of Dancing With the Stars, but was voted off the first week after her waltz and rumba failed to impress audiences. But the former Bachelorette was already busy with another project—expanding her family with Sutter. At 34, the reality star announced she and her match made in television heaven husband were having their first child. In July 2007, the pair welcomed Max after two years of trying to have a baby. In April, they welcome their second baby, a girl named Blakesley to add to their picture-perfect family. Last year, Rehn told People that the couple is “open to whatever” in regard to a potential return to reality TV, but so far, it seems “whatever” has yet to come into fruition—unless you count the couple’s recent Skechers ad. Rehn, Sutter, and Max (in the pre-Blakesley days) took part in the campaign in support of Vail Valley Charitable Fund, which helps those in Eagle County, Colorado, who’ve suffered financially due to medical crisis. Save the Sutters, save the world.
ABC / Everett Collection; Newscom
Tis’ the season for the first young artist to prove America’s Got Talent in 2006—Bianca Ryan. The then-11-year-old Pennsylvania native blew away audiences and judges alike with her “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls audition. Her shockingly powerful voice earned her a spot in the finals and eventually, the whopping $1 million prize. But all the money and talent in the world could not make this prepubescent girl a commercial success. On September 18, 2006, Ryan signed a five-album record deal with SYCOmusic (part of Columbia Records), but her debut self-titled album released just two months later only reached No. 57 on the Billboard charts. The following year, around the same time, Ryan released Christmas Everyday! and just one month ago, she had her second go at a holiday EP with The True Meaning of Christmas. To complement her latest efforts, the now-15-year-old Ryan will also host the Bianca Ryan Christmas Special, airing on international Trinity Broadcast Network through New Year’s. The young singer’s single “That’s Not Me” includes the angsty lyrics: “Stop trying to make me change/ Stop trying to make me fake/ ‘Cause I really don't appreciate it” and seems to come from the heart. But she’ll seemingly continue to plug away at her music career. “Plan B is that there is no Plan B,” Ryan once told her father, according to The Northeast Times. “Well, maybe I’d be a model.”
Michael Buckner / Getty Images; Bryan Bedder / Getty Images
