Michelle de Swarte lands BBC modelling comedy
- Michelle de Swarte is writing and set to star in High End Homeless, a BBC Two comedy drama based upon her former life as a catwalk model
- The London-born comic spent a decade working in fashion in New York and started performing stand-up there
- High End Homeless is the BBC's third recent comedy order from Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's production company Various Artists Limited
Michelle de Swarte has landed a BBC Two comedy drama series based upon her former life as a catwalk model, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal.
The stand-up and star of Sky horror-comedy The Baby, is writing and set to star in the semi-autobiographical High End Homeless, about an "ageing model" who returns to London and finds herself homeless, with six 30-minute episodes ordered.
Made by Various Artists Limited, the commission is the BBC's third current comedy order from Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's production company, following Mawaan Rizwan's Juice and Henpocalypse!, written by Caroline Moran and directed by Holly Walsh.
A taster pilot for High End Homeless was originally commissioned by Channel 4 and shot in London at the start of the year. BCG understands the series will shoot this summer, to air in the spring of 2024.
The pilot co-starred It's A Sin's Delroy Brown, Joni Ayton-Kent (Don't Forget The Driver), Amanda Wilkin (Finding Alice), Victoria Alcock (People Just Do Nothing), Alaa Habib and Levi Brown and was directed by commercials director Joe Roberts (Nick Helm: Morning Person, The Delightful Sausage's Ginster's Paradise). Casting for the series has yet to emerge.
De Swarte only made her acting debut in 2020, playing the role of Bev, best friend of Katherine Ryan's character Katherine in the Canadian stand-up's Netflix comedy The Duchess.
However, she then starred in The Baby on Sky Atlantic and HBO in the US, as a woman unexpectedly landed with a newborn that turns out to have violent, manipulative powers.
De Swarte was scouted by a modelling agency in London at 19 and moved to New York for a decade-long career in fashion, before starting stand-up and television presenting in the city, returning to London three years ago.
A model from the late nineties till 2015, de Swarte has talked about her periods of homelessness, financial struggles, drug issues and the pressure to have cosmetic enhancements put on her by her former modelling agency, as well as performing stand-up about encountering notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during the chaotic aftermath of the 11th September terrorist attacks.
"They sent me to New York" she told Adam Buxton on his podcast last month. "I was only meant to be out there for two weeks and I made money in New York and I was like, I'm not leaving ... the catalogue was like, $12,000 a day and I was like, 'is everyone alright?!'"
At that time "you could model from 12, 13-years-old, be doing topless shots. You'd see girls in New York who were on their own, it was wild. It gets to be quite corrupt. But you can't really see it at the time and you can't really speak to anyone about it because everyone's like 'oh, look at you, you're a model now!'
"But I don't know how my finances work, I'm living in a country where a lot of these girls don't speak the language ... the fun parts of it was the privilege of getting a lot of attention. I would say beauty, as it's framed in that way as it was then, was like having a trust fund. Especially for me, coming from a country that's very classist, all of a sudden, it's like being really posh or something ... And you know exactly how pretty you are because that's your day rate ... there's something fucked up about it but there's something magical about how fashion is so shallow but it's wide who it lets in.
"I definitely had some fun while I was doing it. I also felt empty. I also done a shit tonne of coke. All of these things to make it make sense."
Also recalling being married, divorced and "burning your life to the ground and starting again when forty is around the corner", de Swarte begins a mini stand-up tour, Moved, at the Komedia in Brighton on 2nd March.
A BBC spokesperson declined to comment on High End Homeless.