BACK UP: Fox plans a celeb version of “The Swan,” an early reality hit, this summer. (
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“The Swan” — once called “the most sadistic reality series of the decade” — is set to return as a two-hour special this summer with celebrities on the operating table.
The original show — which pulled in more than 15 million viewers for its 2005 premiere — offered extreme plastic surgeries to “ugly ducklings” who then competed against each other in a televised beauty pageant.
But the original contestants are not unanimous in wanting to see the show come back,
Ex-”Swan” Lorrie Arias now says she suffers from bipolar disorder, lupus, depression and has become a prisoner in her Southern California home since receiving a $300,000 cosmetic overhaul on the original series.
“I am agoraphobic, on meds and unable to enjoy life,” she tells The Post.
Other women say their lives are better for the experience — though eight years after the show, almost all the former Swans, it turns out, are divorced.
“Kelly [Becker] and I are probably the only ones that stuck with our mates,” reports former contestant Kathy (Rickers) Weber, who expects to graduate from nursing school near Chicago this spring.
Arias, 42, blames much of her misfortune on lack of follow-up treatment from show therapists.
“I had the most surgeries of any Swan in the history of the show and it has all gone to absolute sh-t,” the widowed mother of two says. “I am a 300-pound mess of a person who is afraid to go outside.”
“Some of the girls have had problems with their surgeries, and I would have thought [the producers] would have helped a little more with that,” says Season 1 winner Rachel Love. “But what can you expect from them?
“Reality shows aren’t there to guide you for the rest of your life.”
Love, who is now divorced, says she’s heard some of the ex-Swans are unhappy now and calls several of the women from the show “crybabies.”
Some ex-Swans had been planning to take their grievances to the media soon after the show ended, says former contestant Tawnya Cooke — who wrote a tell-all “The Swan Diaries: Dirt Behind The Scenes of Reality TV” about the show.
But ultimately they changed their minds, she says.
“You can’t keep blaming some particular event for the rest of your life,” she says.
“I don’t know what happened to Lorrie. But for the rest of us, it was scary and the followup was sh-tty, but as far as making people freaky? I don’t think so.”
Fox has not given any details of what the new show will look like — or who will be on it — the second time around.
But among the names rumored for the cast are former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and reclusive “Happy Days” actress Erin Moran.
Reps for Fox and Arthur Smith & Co., which produces the show, declined to comment yesterday.