Jamie Dornan Looks Back on His Short-Lived Modeling Career & Brief Stint as a Reality TV Contestant

Jamie Dornan is opening up about his early career as a model and his time spent as a reality TV contestant!

In an interview for SiriusXM’s Radio Andy, Jamie shocked his Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar co-stars Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig by revealing that he once appeared on the reality TV show Model Behavior.

The Fifty Shades of Grey actor explained, “The truth behind that Andy, was I’d been at university for a year. I used to play a lot of rugby at school. And I was very sporty and I was playing rugby at uni and drinking a lot. And I decided I was going to drop out of university. ‘Cause it just didn’t, it wasn’t the right space for me at the time.”

Ultimately it was Jamie‘s sister who pushed him to audition for the show. “This was sort of almost pre-reality TV,” he continued. Well, you know, like it wasn’t like, it wasn’t even being pitched to us. It was just like, we didn’t really know what it was. My sister says, ‘You should go.’ And I said, ‘What is it?’ And she says, ‘To be a model.’ And I was like, ‘Why would I want to be a model, what a model,’ like it’s the last, no kid where I’m from grows up wanting to be a model. I’ll tell you that. And so I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’ She’s just do it, do it. And then I convinced one of my mates to come with me.”

“That your parents made you try out for a reality show. This is not what I expected, go on,” Andy joked.

“This is like pre-American Idol,” Jamie added. “This is like, nobody knew we didn’t know what a reality TV show was. It wasn’t even sold as that. And I’m, I convinced him to get out of bed. I went and he got kicked out early doors and I like did all right. I actually didn’t even do that well on the show, but it got me enough to sort of move to London. And that was it. And then like two months later, I was working at a bar full time and I’d moved to London and I convinced everyone to let me like follow some dream. I mean, I, I never wanted to be a model. I hated it, but I’d acted at school and I’d always done that too. So it was, it felt like a bit of a gateway into that. So yeah, it was a crazy time.”

Jamie also recently revealed whether he’d rather be in a book club with Dakota Johnson or Anastasia Steele. Find out who he picked!