Mary Alice Stephenson, co-host of America’s Most Smartest Model, is a fashion industry insider whose smart looks and smart tongue control her show’s pretty people. Each week we talk with her about issues on the show. This time the subjects are Brett’s dirty mouth, Rachel’s overall collapse and — what else? — V.J.’s sneaky-sneaky behavior.

VH1: We laughed a lot when Pickel’s head appeared over Brett’s and offered him advice.
Mary Alice Stephenson: Pickel and Brett are lifelong friends. You could really tell on the show that they were digging each other. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of Pickel and Brett show popping up — I don’t know if it would be on VH1! [Laughs] The producers are trying to figure out what to do with that now. They kind of tried to swing it that they were gay, but that didn’t work because no one believed it. They’re both smart, hot guys who love women. I keep thinking that they’re like great TV duos, like the guys from CHiPs or The Dukes of Hazzard . . .

VH1: Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari.
MAS: Total Bosom Buddies! They were funny together on the show. There’s a little surprise twist coming up, so get ready.

VH1: But it wasn’t much of a shock that Brett had to go.
MAS: He has so much potential as a model or an actor. He’s great-looking and smart. But the bottom line is that now, in the competition, you can’t get one thing wrong. They’re all smart. They’re all great-looking. They’re all working very hard. So when he volunteered to complete the edge challenge on his own, basically, he didn’t do himself any favors. Physically, that was a tough challenge to complete. So he couldn’t race in the go-kart competition, and then he really screwed up as a spokesmodel for Jaguar. He stopped in the middle of the presentation and said “F*ck!” loudly in front of a whole audience of executives. This was a very corporate environment — the west coast headquarters of Jaguar. This wasn’t a group of kids who’d laugh at something like that. You could hear a pin drop. He really had to be eliminated after that.

VH1: And what did you think about Rachel?
MAS: It was a tough call, deciding between her and Andre. We had to look back at the whole competition. Rachel needed a lot of help with the car. Both of them pulled it together, but we had to decide whose presentation at Jaguar was better. Andre had more information. But it was a real toss-up. It could have gone either way. Ben and I had a really hard time with that. Rachel’s got a lot of potential as an actress and a spokesmodel, but I was really disappointed in her. I think she was really tired at that point. She wasn’t on her game, so she had to let go.

VH1: V.J. demonstrated some more sneaky — or smart, depending on how you look at it — behavior this time.
MAS: We never said that you couldn’t use the phone! The problem was that maybe the rules weren’t defined well enough for the contestants. We never saw V.J. doing that. But now that I saw that on the show, I don’t think that’s V.J. being sneaky — I think that’s V.J. being smart. There was a phone in the house, any of them could have called their mom or their friends for more information. From our point of view — since we weren’t privileged to knowledge about everything that was going on in the house — V.J. did an incredible job.

VH1: But in the end, there was a tie. Andre didn’t like that.
MAS: The head of Jaguar made the decision. The producers allowed him to call it, and that’s what he said. It definitely made it more interesting. V.J. and Angela really got their own personalities across with their presentations. Jaguar was impressed with both of them. I was like, “Thank god they did a good job because the three who I thought would do well didn’t!” And all of corporate Jaguar was there thinking, “What’s wrong with these kids?”

VH1: On the message boards and in the blog, some people have accused you of favoring the boys over the girls because you had crushes on them.
MAS: A lot of the guys were actually more model, in a way. It wasn’t playing favorites. That’s not to say the girls weren’t great and good-looking. But the guys had more experience and were better in front of the camera. I could actually use them on shoots. Yeah, they were cute, but I tend to go for older men. But as far as the boys flirting with me and vice-versa . . . no. They’re all really handsome guys, but this is work. At the same time as we were taping, I was running my consulting business, helping out Bazaar, and I have my 12-month-old in the van with me and my baby-daddy alongside me. The truth is that the men were frequently better at the challenges, and more model-like.

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