ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT: Would you have started this agency without the Oxygen network's interest in doing a reality series?

JANICE DICKINSON: Yes. What else am I supposed to do? Work at Hertz or Avis? There is only so much a supermodel can do after her shelf life is up. And mine was just about up.

ET: What are you looking for in these people? Especially since it's a TV show, are you also looking for drama?

JANICE: We're looking for the truth. I won't know it until I see it. I won't know it until I see it walk up. How will I know? I don't know. The answer is I don't know until I see it. It's like ... do you know what you are looking for when you are trying to fall in love? I don't, not until it happens.

ET: So what is it like being the star of your own show?

JANICE: I don't know yet. It's not on. I was the star of "America's Next Top Model," as far as I'm concerned. And as far as my boss, Tyra, she used to say, "Well, I'm the producer." And I was like, "Yeah, but you weren't in Vogue that much." I really do respect what she does, but [her contestants] are not supermodels. I coined the term. I ate, slept and s**t modeling, and I'm still doing it. And that's what I'm prepared to do.

ET: What is the difference between a supermodel and a model?

JANICE: I coined the term supermodel back in 1979 when I had the flu, like I do right now, when I was taking every job available. I grew up broke, poor. We were very poor. And I was doing runway, I was doing editorial, I was doing catalog work, I was doing television commercials and being a spokesperson for Revlon and Bloomingdale's, blah, blah, blah. My agent then was MONIQUE PILAR of Elite Modeling Agency, and she was French and she said, "Janice, who do you think you are? Superman?" I said, "No" -- being really egoed out -- "I'm a supermodel, honey, and you will refer to me as a supermodel and you will start a supermodel division." So I became the first supermodel because I did everything. Sure, there were great models in my past -- the great LAUREN HUTTON, the great SUZY PARKER, the great DORIAN LEIGH -- but they didn't walk.

ET: What's the problem with today's society when it comes to looking at models and people in general?

JANICE: We have been giving young girls and boys a sense of falseness by looking at the magazines and not knowing that everything has been pinned, the lighting in the photograph is just specially made up to fool the public. I've been fooling the public for years, being a model, and I'm really good at it. That's why I've done it. But it gives children and adults a sense of falseness. You look at something and then get depressed because you wake up -- "I woke up this morning looking like s**t." I mean, how am I going to get through the day? I just don't feel that good. So in fashion and photography, in essence, we fool people. In this show we are going to try to repair that.

ET: And the issue of eating disorders?

JANICE: I'm a former bulimic, myself, and it's just a horrible, horrible addiction that one -- like anything else, gambling, chocoholism, alcoholism -- it's all the same, addictions. It's terrible. Yes, the models are still doing that. Just last month alone, at Bryant Park in New York City -- was it two months ago? No, it was in July. I saw the girls going back and forth to the bathrooms, wiping their noses, smoking cigarettes, you know, dabbing their mouths after hurling a meal. It's really tragic. So we're going to keep an eye on that.