Reality TV gets too real
Heidi Klum bids Auf Wiedersehen to hubby Seal: What hope do the rest of us have?
"As you know, in fashion, one day you're in and the next you're out." Now, for Project Runway supermodel host Heidi Klum, the same is true for her marriage.
Klum announced Saturday that she is filing for divorce from her husband, British singer Seal. Citing irreconcilable differences, the divorce will end a seven-year marriage that offered a fashionably entertaining personal backdrop to her top-rated Lifetime Television show. The split also prompts the question: Who can stay married in Hollywood if the hottest, happiest couple on the block can't do it? I mean, he's the "Kiss from a Rose" guy, and she's a Victoria's Secret model, for the love of Lagerfeld.
The news of the couple's split comes during a resurgence in popularity of the long-running show, currently running a fan-favorites Project Runway All-Stars season with Klum (and judges Michael Kors and Nina Garcia and mentor Tim Gunn) conspicuously absent.
All-Stars is nice to tide us over until the next real season of the show, but let's be honest: Angela Lindvall is no Heidi Klum. With her catch phrases, her charming accent and her willingness to gush over her favorite designers, Klum is the beautiful, energetic heart of this impossibly age-defying reality show.
Klum and Seal (full name: Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel) met in 2004, the same year Klum began hosting and executive producing the future sleeper hit for Bravo. Klum told Oprah in a shockingly candid interview that it was how Seal looked in his bicycle shorts that made her really take notice of him. ("The whole package," she said, to the delight of housewives everywhere.)
Who can stay married in Hollywood if the hottest, happiest couple on the block can't do it? I mean, he's the "Kiss from a Rose" guy, and she's a Victoria's Secret model, for the love of Lagerfeld.
When they met, Klum was pregnant with Formula 1 driver Flavio Briatore’s baby, a fact that Seal took in stride as he assumed fatherly duties for the newborn, Helene Boshoven "Leni" Klum.
The couple married in 2005 and had three more children together: Henry Gunther Ademola Dashtu Samuel, Johan Riley Fyodor Taiwo Samuel and Lou Sulola Samuel. Seal also adopted Leni, and she assumed his last name. They were advertised as the happiest, most fashionable couple in the public eye: a dead-sexy Benetton ad uniting the worlds of music, fashion and TV. It's strange to think of our beloved fashion fraülein sans her ideal husband.
I stumbled across the first season of Project Runway on DVD in a bargain bin sale after the holidays, and it's bizarre seeing Klum learning the ropes of hosting and producing. At the time of its filming, there was no way she would know the show would be an international hit, that it would garner tremendous awards attention and that three of her children would be featured in utero as the seasons passed.
Well over 100 designers have also passed through the Project Runway machine in 10 seasons, another version of Klum's extended progeny. She's given so much to us already, hasn't she?
I, for one, have loved Klum and her televised offspring. And her overly sexy, kinda trashy relationship with Seal helped to make the show a special part of those Thursday nights. Perhaps Single Mom Klum will be full of new vigor and determination, delivering a new era of Project Runway on par with Recently-Coupled Klum's Season 1 or Happy-Babymaker Klum's Season 3.
I say let's get back to the old days when villains and drama queens ruled the Runway.
Ultimately, Klum and Seal are celebrities, not real people we know. So that helps. But it does make you wonder... If these beautiful people can't work it out, what hope do we have?
