What Mark Medlock Is Probably Doing Now

Genuinely no idea who Emilija Mihailova is. According to the press materials around her Playboy shoot, she competed on Deutschland sucht den Superstar—Germany’s long-running answer to American Idol—and apparently gave judges Dieter Bohlen and Mousse T. something to think about. That may well be true. I haven’t watched DSDS since Mark Medlock won, which was many years ago now, and I remain distantly curious about what he’s up to these days.

The show still has an audience, somehow. Year after year, people tune in for Dieter Bohlen’s surgical cruelty, for the contestant who keeps auditioning and keeps failing, for the winners who take home the trophy and then vanish from cultural memory within a quarter. Emilija is 29, Swiss, and enjoys reading, baking, and going out with friends. The full profile.

I’m not a little girl anymore—I’m a woman and I’m comfortable in my own skin, she says in the accompanying interview, with a confidence that’s hard to argue with. I’m just the way I am, and people tell me that’s sexy. So I figure: fine, I’ll stay that way. She also mentions taking nude photos of herself at home to check how a new thong or bikini looks on her body, which is either extremely casual self-documentation or extremely calculated PR positioning—probably both, and there’s nothing wrong with either. Emilija Mihailova was on a reality singing competition, and now she’s in Playboy. The pipeline remains operational.