Watching yourself on TV is weird. There is no way around it. Every time I watch the E show Scouted and see Erin Olson Salt Lake City model scout flash across the screen I have flashbacks to the days when I never missed an episode of Talk Soup with Greg Kinnear on the E Channel and it feels pretty surreal that I’m appearing on that same network. As I watch the show, all of the context behind every scene is running through my mind and I find myself wanting to shout “but that’s not the whole story!!!” “If only people knew what was going on behind the scenes!!!” There were a bunch of moments like that for me in this episode. The truth is, there is only so much you can fit into a 1 hour show, so a lot has to be cut. So if you want to get a little peek behind the scenes and hear some of my thoughts about this episode, here you go.

First of all, as a mother of three children ages 4, 3, and 1, I know what it’s like to worry about my little ones. As a model scout, I learned early on that those motherly instincts are really important in this business. Amber had a bit of a rough start to her trip to New York, her mother literally had a panic attack as they were checking in to get ready to board the plane. The E Scouted film crew literally found out about this as it happened and made sure they were there to film us arriving without Amber’s mother. I felt bad for her Mom because she was genuinely gripped with an uncontrollable fear of flying. I’ve been to New York with models enough in the past to not worry for a minute about this change of events, I really just felt for Amber’s Mom. This kind of thing can happen, and I’m really honored to be the one to help out when it does. I had an incredible model who walked the runway at NY fashion week early this year and I had the chance to spend a week with her in NY, helping her navigate her way around the city to all of the castings all over Manhattan. It is a ridiculously daunting task even for grown adults to find their way around Manhattan, let alone a teenage girl. So I’ve been the mother figure for models before, and I love helping in that way.

Amber was really strong throughout the process of filming in NY. I’m really proud of the way she held up. It’s not easy to go literally from being scouted in a mall and a couple of weeks later standing in front of one of the top modeling agency owners in the world (Scott Lipps) and showing him the pictures that were just taken by one of the top fashion photographers in the world (Danny Christensen).

On a funny side note, Amber is wearing a lot of my clothes in this episode because she had most of her clothes in her Mom’s suitcase which was left home when her Mom couldn’t come. She forgot about that- so I had to step in to loan her some clothes and even dashed to about 5 different stores to round up clothes for the scene when she met the team in the NY office. Sometimes you have to improvise in this business. Amber took it all in stride. Overall, I’m really proud of her, she has the makings of an excellent model with a strong editorial look. I’m excited to see how she does as she launches into the international modeling world as a newly signed model with One Model Management!