First deaf contestant competes on ‘America’s Next Top Model’

LOS ANGELES: To hear Nyle DiMarco tell it, his rapid rise in the modeling world has been pretty much accidental.
He once did a casual shoot with a photographer friend, but nothing came of it until a few years ago, when an independent film producer persuaded him to try his hand at acting and modeling. Soon enough, he had an agent in Los Angeles and a guest-starring role on ABC’s “Switched at Birth.”
Then, last November, he got a message from the casting directors at “America’s Next Top Model.”
Intrigued by his photos on social media, they contacted him through models.com and asked whether he’d be interested in auditioning for the show. But until they got his sample video, there was something they didn’t know — like his two brothers, his parents and two more generations of DiMarcos before him, the dark-haired, blue-eyed model is deaf.
“They asked me, ‘How would this work?’ ” DiMarco says, signing energetically to an interpreter during an interview. “Do you need an interpreter with you the whole time?“
The 26-year-old from Frederick, Maryland, who has heard these questions before, had ready answers. No, he wouldn’t always need an interpreter. And yes, it would work. He knows because he has been successfully communicating with hearing people all his life.
And so, with less than a year of professional modeling experience, DiMarco was cast as the first deaf contestant on “America’s Next Top Model,” the 22nd — and possibly last, if you’re reading host Tyra Banks’s tea leaves — season of which premiered Wednesday on the CW.
After his performance on the first episode, TVLine pegged him as the “most intriguing hopeful.” But on-screen, Banks scolded him for smiling too much and agreed when fellow judge Kelly Cutrone called him “goofy.”