“And it was really big. It still is really big. It was the show that started the shows…everything now is watered down and a bit dull. But back then it was exciting and new.

“I sat there and I just went, ‘Pull yourself together. This is not hard to do. This is your job’.”

And so, as the swarm of young women lined themselves up in front of him, the execs, the bible holders and the cameras, Mathura-Jeffree got a grip of his arms, legs, glorious hair and practically perfect face. Everything, that is, but his mouth.

“The first girl walked [down the catwalk] and I went, ‘Don’t hobble like a cripple’.” He both winces and flashes a smile as wide as a Cheshire cat’s remembering the moment.

My God man, she had lost her shoe! What was she meant to do?

“Pick it up. Work it out…I walked on a runway once and it disconnected from the stage and rolled into the audience. Then the audience put their feet up and kicked it back.”

Mathura-Jeffree is that kind of person. The “got a box of lemons? Let’s make gin and tonics” kind.

The only people he doesn’t like are stupid ones. He apologises to others who hate him for being “so ridiculously photogenic” (because he doesn’t even think he’s, you know, good looking). He feels privileged to be invited to parties, but sometimes wonders if he’s asked because “of being really exotic”. As a model – a real, top one who worked for Versace and Jean Paul Gaultier – he was constantly told “your nose is too big, you’re too black, we don’t want you, we’ll shave all your body hair”. But that made him tough as nails, steely.

“[Models] don’t miss a beat. We let people lie to us. We can read a lie. Why? Because I’m from an industry built on illusion… I just let people think they can get away with it. And I lock it, I load it [in my memory].”

Now, those memories are being unloaded. The world is reliving – and re-evaluating – the impact of America’s Next Top Model. The early noughties reality show hosted by supermodel Tyra Banks for 15 years is the subject of a Netflix documentary investigating its darkest moments.

Highlights (lowlights?) include models being asked to switch ethnicities for a photo shoot and another where gun violence was glamourised. There are clips of offensive comments made about contestants’ appearance and size and the cosmetic lengths they were forced to undergo to remain on the show, as well as mental health struggles, bullying and inappropriate behaviour by male models.

Mathura-Jeffree sent a series of WhatsApp messages in real time as he watched the series. The first sums it up: “the unreality of reality”.

“[Modelling] throughout the history of the modern-day commercial landscape was always based on the capacity to sell to a gender, age or community and ANTM clearly abandoned that for ratings,” he wrote.

He had seen the production from the inside too, as a guest judge when the show visited New Zealand in 2010. Producer Jenny Goosby (still a good friend) had watched him on our local version and cast him “because of how good I was and how neutral I was … and funny”. It didn’t take long to understand how manufactured the drama was.

“I noticed, ‘Oh, there’s a heavy focus on personality’. There are maybe three cool models and the rest are just noise. And chaos and drama and TV.

“It was entirely different to our show…They had money and we were building the most magnificent show – as Kiwis do – on the smell of an oily rag and made it look lush,” he says.

Did that rag make New Zealand’s version as problematic as the Americans? Worse? Better? Mathura-Jeffree pauses.

“I think hindsight’s a great thing,” he says eventually. “I’m sure we made some faux pas along the way. But Kiwis are powerful. They’re tough. That’s no excuse to treat someone in a mediocre way, but also, this is a television show. So besides trying to find an actual next top model, we’re looking for entertainment. And boy, were they entertaining.”

He remembers the contestant who had activated charcoal delivered to the model share house so “her poo didn’t smell” and another joyfully tearful after seeing a dolphin in Lake Wakatipu (“There are no dolphins in that lake”).

None of this is said as callously as it might read. He stills feels a sense of protection over those young women.

“When I listen to people talk about our industry like it’s frivolous or full of narcissists, they have no idea about the love, the care.

“You can go back to models I knew back in the day, stylists, hairdressers. They just said I was formidably protective. I’m not weak. And I’m not scared of people. And I’m not scared of bullies, especially bullies.”

Now 53, he was just 19 when, on his first day at university in Auckland, he was told he could be a model. He wanted to be a scientist – a palaeontologist, really – and he’s still obsessed with dinosaurs and history.

That chance encounter (and his glorious face) took him around the world, on to catwalks, magazine covers and eventually TV screens. A role in Xena was first. Later he hosted baking shows and competed on dancing shows. Some of it he loved, some he hated. But Top Model was different.

“I got a lot out of it. That show put me into the mainstream,” he says.

“And one [thing] leads to the next, leads to the next and true doors open. And if a door doesn’t open, it’s not meant for me. Or [you] kick it down. Climb through the window, do anything.”

Beaming into the homes of middle New Zealand every week brought a fame that was quick and at times, too much. Being mobbed by teenage girls at Balmoral KFC? Fun. Being the verbal punching bag for radio shockjocks? No thanks.

“I was, all of a sudden, thrust into being popular. I was also being punished. People were saying things about me that were nasty, for pure entertainment.”

For almost 20 years, Colin Mathura-Jeffree’s been a mainstay of society and gossip pages, a “man-about-town” sipping champagne and nibbling free canapes.

That lifestyle wasn’t always his choice. “MediaWorks people, agents, managers, all of it” were pushing him to be more places, do more charity gigs, sign on to more jobs. He was working every single day and it was exhausting.

“I felt all this chaos around me. People would tell me, ‘You have to do it or you’re the bad guy’…‘Do you want to work in New Zealand or do you want your career to end?’

“I challenge anyone to say I was trouble, because I always tried to get the job done.

“But people get very predatory, they just want to use you.”

It was a chance meeting with ANTM host Tyra Banks away from filming that gave him perspective. When he told her how much he was working, she told him enough was enough: if he dropped dead from exhaustion, the people pulling the strings would replace him in a second.

“No one cares. Care for yourself, Colin,” he remembers her saying.

Today, Mathura-Jeffree is as busy as he wants to be. He hosts events (like a risqué New Year’s party at an Auckland adult club) and still dabbles in reality TV (if you haven’t watched him on Traitors NZ, that’s something for you to do this afternoon). Fans can get a personalised birthday message or pep talk for $80 a pop on celebrity video platform Cameo. He’s also working on strengthening trade relationships between New Zealand companies and India. He has people clambering for his expertise and connections.

“It’s been a dream of mine since my early career success as an Anglo Indian, New Zealand-born model who lived the high life through the 90s in India, to help NZ products enter the massive Indian marketplace,” he told the Herald’s Society Insider earlier this year.

When he’s not travelling, Mathura-Jeffree lives alone in Mt Albert, the Auckland suburb he grew up in. And every day, he wakes at 4am to “look at the stars, drink water and appreciate being alive”.

He’s never considered getting married, and is single “by choice and with lots of lovers…I’m the Whore of Babylon”. He screeches with laughter before yelling “it’s a lie, it’s a lie”. He has had “real love” in his life, specifically “a really great relationship” with a “brilliant” man he is no longer with.

“But I swing. I’m, you know, quite happily with anyone. And I’ve been like that forever. I never had to come out to my parents. I was just allowed [to be]. I think that came out of the fact that mum was Indian, dad British. There was no declaration or anything.”

His father Clifford died in the late 90s. His mother, Rosalie, died just before Covid struck. “My mum was brilliant, protective, intelligent, caring, hilarious,” he says softly.

She was the one who told him it was in his DNA to never step back from a fight, and to always step towards it.

“I’m a good guy but I’m not a walkover and if I discover you’ve done something that is off, and some stupid idiot has believed you, I will open the dams and drown you,” he says.

Yes, he promises he will eventually write a book. Yes, that extensive battle list will surely be in there. It just might need to be a work of fiction-inspired-by-truth, rather than a tell-all memoir. He doesn’t care about being blacklisted, but getting sued is a whole other story. If there’s one thing Mathura-Jeffree is not, it’s a fool.

“I’m not into dismantling people’s lives. And I’m privy to some secrets,” he says with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

“I hold receipts and I am not afraid.”

Bridget Jones joined the New Zealand Herald in 2025. She has been a lifestyle and entertainment journalist and editor for more than 15 years.