Dressed in matching school uniforms, with pleated skirts, knee-high socks and smart grey blazers, ten young women – aged 16 to 21 – stand side by side on a stage.
They’re holding hands, clutching one another for comfort. Some have tears rolling down their cheeks, their shoulders shaking in silent sobs.
If you think the training regime on Strictly sounds gruelling, it’s nothing compared to what these girls have been through over the past 18 months.
In the audience are their parents, siblings and closest friends, who have journeyed to the studio in Los Angeles, to await news of their fate. Around the world, ten million people are watching online.
The jubilant winning members of Katseye on stage for the live finale in Los Angeles, California
One by one, an announcer reads out six names. These are the girls who have been chosen, after a two-year gruelling selection process, to join Katseye, a new girl band. One to rival the South Korean pop group Blackpink, that’s huge globally, including in the UK.
They cross the stage to rapturous applause and step into a spotlight, beaming: They’ve made it. Global mega-stardom, a recording deal and the career of their dreams awaits.
The lights dim on the other four, who, choking back tears, are ushered off stage, where they will collect their belongings and return to their normal lives.
In an instant, their lifelong ambitions have been dashed. They have made huge sacrifices to be here: some have moved halfway across the world; left family for the first time; sacrificed jobs, university places, future plans and friendships.
As one eliminated contestant earlier admits: ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. Like, I have no idea. I have no money right now in my bank account.’
For the music executives behind the process, however, this process isn’t about these young people’s well-being. Everything they’ve put them through – the highs and excruciating lows – is pure entertainment.
‘It’s a survival show,’ explains Mitra Darab, president of a collaboration between South Korean entertainment giant Hybe and American label Geffen Records, which was behind the creation of Katseye – the world’s first truly ‘global’ girl group.
‘You have to create that drama,’ she adds. ‘You have to create that competition. It’s entertainment – and this is what the fans really want.’
She may have a point. Pop Star Academy: Katseye, the eight-part Netflix documentary that traces the band’s journey – from the 120,000 hopefuls who auditioned, to the live finale last November – is one of the most-watched series on the streaming platform this week.
Gripping, eye-opening and, at times, horrifying, the new docu-series – shot by Nadia Hallgren, the director behind the 2020 Michelle Obama biopic ‘Becoming’ – takes viewers behind the scenes of the making of a pop band.
But this is no ordinary band.
Emulating the intensive and often controversial methods involved in manufacturing Korean pop or ‘K-pop’ stars, a genre with a huge international fanbase, executives set out to make American-style music, in a Korean way.
Fans have been left reeling by some of the scenes in the documentary, which sees trainees as young as 14 battling everything from homesickness to agonising injuries to secure their spot in the band.
Some have called out the apparently callous behaviour of the music execs, who seem to delight in pitting the contestants against one another.
Particularly difficult are the end-of-month evaluations, in which each trainee performs a song-and-dance routine in front of the others – and is then subjected to frank and humiliating public critique by the executives.
The eliminations are brutal, too. In the latter stages of the competition, the names of the girls who are going home simply pop up on a screen, their fate read out by a computer.
Jisoo, Lisa, Jennie, and Rose of Blackpink perform at the Coachella festival in California
‘The emotional rollercoaster of Pop Star Academy is something else,’ writes one fan on X.
Another says: ‘It shows how badly executives want to emulate K-Pop’s very strict trainee programmes, and how much that means playing on these girls’ insecurities to get the ‘best’ out of them.’
Whatever your take on the ethics of the series, it’s certainly a compelling watch.
We see 20 aspiring stars from around the world (whittled down from video auditions) upend their lives to attend a 12-month boarding school-style training camp in Los Angeles – many of them against their families’ wishes and advice.
‘I didn’t get to graduate because of this,’ says one hopeful, 18-year-old Adela Jergova, who’s travelled from Bratislava, Slovakia. ‘I’m a high school drop-out.’
Marquise, Daniela, Lara, Sophia, Ezrela, Manon, Emily, Yoonchae, Samara and Megan in action
Adela, who started dancing when she was three years old and practised ballet for nine hours a day as a teenager, admits her parents ‘were at first a bit apprehensive about this as a career’.
Another, 19-year-old Ezrela Abraham, from Sydney, Australia, says: ‘My grandparents completely oppose this, but my parents just want me to be successful.’
They are, without exception, enormously talented – but some of the girls struggle, thousands of miles from home, to adapt to an unfamiliar culture without the support of their family.
Karlee Tanaka, 19, from Hawaii, admits with a sad smile: ‘I’ve never been away from home this long. I feel like the first week, I cried every single day.’
And while many friendships are formed, there are – predictably – rows, clashes and rifts between the young women, with tensions and jealousy never far from the surface.
Blackpink pose with their Honorary MBEs at Buckingham Palace in November
As one of them puts it: ‘This is a girl group, not a friend group.’
The trainees endure hour after hour of demanding dance lessons, vocal coaching and elite athlete-level physical conditioning to keep their tiny frames – on show in crop-tops and skin-tight outfits – in lean condition.
‘We have to work and sweat all day long, every single day,’ sighs Iliya Ria, 20, from Belarus.
The classes are unforgiving and unrelenting: in one scene, we watch Iliya being berated by dance coach Nikky Paramo. ‘Put in the work,’ she tells her. ‘You don’t right now. How much do you practise? Don’t lie.’
Katseye’s Daniela, Naisha, Adela, Nikky, Megan, Lexie and Emily in rehearsals for Pop Star Academy
Nikky, an industry veteran who previously performed with Britney Spears, teaches the girls to dance fast-paced choreography in 6in heels – a technique many of them struggle with.
‘You only push yourself to a limit you know,’ she tells them. ‘I am here to push you to a new limit. We make a new limit every day.’
So extreme is the training that at one point, dancer Emily Kelavos, a 16-year-old American, fractures a bone in her foot, putting her out of action for six weeks.
‘I don’t even know how I fractured it,’ she says, vowing to ‘push on’. ‘It’s just been hurting over time as I’ve been dancing on it.
‘I’m scared. This is my job and, like, my life.’
Another trainee, 17-year-old Lexie Levin, from Stockholm, Sweden, is forced to undergo hip surgery as a result of her injuries.
The Katseye girls in another promo picture – but was it worth all the blood, sweat and tears?
The brutal training techniques employed in the world of K-pop are well-documented, with 14-hour days, single-sex training camps and strictly-enforced discipline commonplace.
Insiders have claimed there is a ‘dark side’ to the industry, with some hopefuls subjected to daily weigh-ins and meal deprivation, pressured to have plastic surgery, and forced into signing all-consuming contracts that restrict their movement, travel and time with loved ones.
Although this doesn’t happen in Pop Star Academy, where the Hybe and Geffen executives repeatedly emphasise the importance of the girls’ mental and physical wellbeing, there are certainly elements of the merciless K-pop approach.
In one scene, we see Swiss-born trainee Manon Bannerman, 21, telling her sister, Lena, that she’s going to be away from home training for two years straight.
‘But you get a break?’ her sister asks. ‘Yeah… for a week,’ Manon replies. ‘Are you serious?’ Lena asks. Manon laughs nervously, admitting she feels ‘immense panic’ she might not succeed.
Then there’s Filipina hopeful Sophia Laforteza, 19, who says: ‘I literally perform for my life every single time I dance.’
‘It’s overwhelming,’ she adds, insisting: ‘I don’t feel overwhelmed in a bad way right now.’
At one point, 14-year-old Hinari Rinchan from Japan is reduced to tears after not being able to pick up a new dance, later saying she is scared of being seen as ‘a burden’.
The process is overseen by Bang Si-Hyuk, chairman of the Korean entertainment company Hybe, who will only watch the girls via a computer screen, refusing to meet them until the band is complete. This, he says, gives him a sense of what ordinary fans feel.
He admits he has favourites, not necessarily the most talented musicians: ‘Usually people believe that skill is the most important part, but for me it’s star power.’
To achieve this, the girls undergo makeovers during the series; one hopeful has their hair dyed bright pink, another’s black locks are bleached platinum blonde, and while they all seem happy with the results, it’s not clear how much choice they had in the matter.
For if they don’t toe the line, or do what the executives demand of them, there are consequences – as 19-year-old Naisha Dos Santos, of Spanish-British descent, finds out.
Naisha is axed from the process halfway through after posting an original song on social media, thereby violating confidentiality. Despite insisting she shared it on a private group, which only comprised other trainees, it’s an unforgivable offence.
Her tears as she is sent home are heart-wrenching. But as project manager Missy Paramo puts it: ‘They know they can be eliminated at any moment for any reason.’
And in the second half of the series, the stakes get even higher. Having been trained privately, only being filmed – as far as they are aware – for the eventual Netflix documentary, there is a shock twist. The trainees suddenly become part of a reality show (known in Korea as a ‘survival show’) produced by Hybe and Geffen, called ‘Dream Academy’, broadcast online to build momentum around the group.
For this, the girls are tasked with three musical ‘missions’ – one of which requires them moving to Seoul, Korea, for a month – each of which is filmed and judged.
The contestants can then track their popularity in real time online, seeing who is the most – and least – popular among their rapidly-growing army of fans. These fans can also vote to make their favourites ‘immune’ from elimination, with the fan votes publicly shared, ranking the girls from best to worst. Unlike the likes of Strictly or I’m A Celebrity, exact voting figures are released, meaning the girls can see just how popular – or unpopular – they are in comparison to their peers.
At the same time, the girls are recorded answering brutal questions about one another, such as: ‘Who do you think will go out next?’ and ‘Who would be in your dream band?’. Without their consent, these videos are then shown to the rest of the group.
Cue tears, fall-outs and the executives’ much longed-for drama.
‘We knew that we needed a more compelling storyline,’ explains Mitra Darab. ‘We wanted to up the ante a bit.’
But even her colleague Missy Paramo admits they may have gone too far, putting unbearable pressure on young women already stretched to their emotional limits.
‘It feels like we’ve reached a breaking point,’ she says. ‘The girls have low morale. Mentally, physically, I think they’re just done.’
The decision to turn the girls into reality stars, and put their fate in the hands of the public, has been slammed by British viewers – and it seems the contestants had no say.
‘From the start we didn’t know this was a survival show,’ says Karlee. ‘It was supposed to be training. What embodies K-pop and a group is their bond and their trust in one another, and what survival shows do is they pit contestants against each other.
‘I don’t believe in putting people against each other to form a group.’
She adds: ‘If this is what it means to be part of this group, I don’t want to be a part of that.’
Another contestant, 17-year-old Brooklyn van Zandt, says she feels ‘betrayed’ by the change in format. Meanwhile Lexie ends up leaving the show after the girls find out that what they thought were private comments they made about the other contestants were aired.
‘The whole programme changed so much when it went public and when it turned into this show turning us against each other,’ she says afterwards.
‘That was something I didn’t like personally. It felt really wrong and I was really upset… it didn’t align with my values. The whole situation just broke my heart.’
She’s not the only one; at the end of the process, the fallout for those who don’t make it into the band can be devastating.
‘I thought I couldn’t dance any more; I was really, fully lost,’ admits Naisha, who splits her time between London and LA and is – like many of her contemporaries – still chasing that elusive fame, but as a solo artist instead.
‘It’s something I had to figure out while I was literally catapulted back home, working a regular nine-to-five, trying to get my life back.’
Adela agrees. ‘At a point, I stopped enjoying dancing, singing, everything, because I was so disappointed that I wasn’t pleasing the people in the programme, even though I was trying so hard,’ she says.
‘Then I thought, why would I let someone take my joy away from this?’
Almost a year on from that emotionally-fraught finale, there’s no denying Katseye, which has been praised for its diverse line-up, is doing well.
The band has a booming social media presence, with 1 million Instagram followers and 6.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and the new Netflix documentary, with its associated controversy, will no doubt boost its profile and add to the hype.
But interestingly, their music isn’t making much of an impact, with their first single entering the charts at 194 in Korea alone, and their first album, SIS (Soft Is Strong) failing to make the Top 20 anywhere, peaking at No 27 in Korea, 45 in the UK and just 119 in the US.
So was it all – the tears, the physical toil, the dashing of hopes and dreams – worth it?
‘The whole experience was just so much tension, so much uncertainty, and so much competition and pressure,’ says Sophia Laforteza, one of the lucky six, in the final episode.
‘Now that we’re here, it’s like: we made it. And phew!’
A moment of reprieve, perhaps.
But the sad truth for these young women entering this fickle and overcrowded industry is this: their journey to the top is far from over. The hard work is not behind them; it’s only just beginning.
- Pop Star Academy: Katseye is on Netflix now
