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Coming on the heels of its eye-opening Secrets of Playboy, which accused the late Playboy honcho Hugh Hefner of being a rapist who was into snuff films and bestiality, A&E is now dropping Secrets of Miss America, a four-part docuseries airing weekly starting July 10.
Miss America, for the record, is an annual pageant for American women from 18 to 28. It differs from Miss USA, a separate pageant owned by the Miss Universe Organization — and for years lorded over by one Donald Trump, who is alleged to have had a penchant for watching teen contestants change and being an overall creep, until he was forced to sell it in 2015 after making racist comments about Mexicans during his campaign kickoff speech.
The man who ruled Miss America with an iron first was Sam Haskell, former worldwide head of television for William Morris, who’d represented everyone from George Clooney to Dolly Parton. Haskell, a Miss America board member who was elevated to CEO, had been credited with saving the Miss America Organization in the early 2000s after it had fallen into near-bankruptcy and was dumped by ABC. His official bio describes him as “the nice guy in Hollywood,” and you’re going to have a really hard time believing that after watching this docuseries featuring the testimonials of more than 20 former Miss Americas who have come forward to share their horror stories for the first time.
“It’s like a dictatorship. You stand up against us, we will terminate you,” one former Miss America says of Haskell’s reign. “From the moment you are crowned to the end of your year, your life is not yours, nor do you have time to think about it,” adds Savvy Shields Wolfe, Miss America 2017.
Secrets of Miss America’s debut episode, titled “Dirty Tricks,” was the only one provided to press in advance, and mostly details Haskell’s bizarre crusade against Mallory Hagan, Miss America 2013 and Miss New York 2012. Hagan grew up in Alabama watching Miss America with her family, becoming particularly enamored with the talent portion. In 2008, she sold all her belongings and booked a one-way ticket to Brooklyn with just $975 in her pocket to chase her dream of being crowned Miss America.
“I definitely was not prepared for the insanity — the psychological warfare,” Hagan recalls. “It truly had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with a person who was used to being in control of those around him.”
Watch an Exclusive Clip From Secrets of Miss America:
Haskell apparently did not allow his Miss America to have any men in their hotel room, including their own father, or even publicly reveal that they were dating anyone.
“One of my friend’s boyfriends brought us Taco Bell to the house,” shares Betty Maxwell, Miss America 2016. “The next day, my tour manager comes in and she was like, ‘Someone called Sam and told him that they saw your boyfriend spend the night with you, so we have to get on a conference call with Sam.’ And then I get reamed out by Sam Haskell for something I didn’t do. They’re very, very anti-boyfriend because they want you to look like you’re America’s sweetheart. They’re trying to be feminists and #MeToo and all these things, and at the same time they’re not thinking that any young twentysomething is dating someone?”
The paranoia and controlling behavior didn’t stop there. According to Shields Wolfe, “It was a time where I didn’t know who to trust. I was told by Sam, ‘I have some of my Miss Americas that work as spies for me,’ to let him know what people were saying about him, what people were saying about Miss America. I was too scared to reach out to anyone. I didn’t know who a spy was.”
During her time as Miss America 2013, Hagan struck up a close friendship with Haskell, spending plenty of time with him and his family. She recounts him saying that she was like “another daughter” to him, and spent a week at his house in Oxford, Mississippi. That was where she met Brent Adams, who was Haskell’s assistant at the time (and later VP of marketing and development for the Miss America Organization). Hagan and Adams began dating, and after she’d relinquished her Miss America title, Adams informed Haskell of the relationship.
Haskell, Adams alleges, “threatened to fire me several times if I didn’t stop dating Mallory,” and “would say these things, ‘she’s a slut’ or ‘she’s a horrible person.’ It was about control. He controls everything and everyone else in his life, and if you go against him, you’re cut out.”
Adams remembers an alleged conversation where Haskell told him, “‘You don’t need to date a piece of trash like [Mallory]. You need someone with class and money, like my daughter.…’ Sam wanted me to be his guy and be under his thumb.”
Around this time, a number of former Miss Americas allege, Haskell initiated a smear campaign against Hagan. Both Shields Wolfe and Maxwell say that they were told not to speak with her, and that they were well aware that she “was not a favored Miss America.”
Claire Buffie Adkisson, Miss New York 2010 and a good pal of Hagan’s, recalls hearing rumors that Hagan had “slept with someone in every state she was visiting as Miss America,” which she describes as “categorically untrue.”
After her tenure as Miss America, Hagan moved out to L.A. to try to get into TV hosting, following in the footsteps of former Miss Americas turned TV personalities Gretchen Carlson and Phyllis George. But every opportunity that came her way, including a stint on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, seemed to disappear. Adams claims to have been in a meeting with Haskell and high-level ABC executives when Haskell accused Hagan of trying to hook up with Miss America host Chris Harrison, while Hagan says she heard that Haskell was calling her a “whore” and “trailer trash” behind her back.
Hagan gave Adams an ultimatum, her or Haskell, and Adams, fearing that a split would harm his future career prospects, chose Haskell. Meanwhile, Hagan moved back to New York, where she and Adkisson started a thriving Miss America coaching business, only to have Haskell’s Miss America Organization try to kill it.
“This entire organization’s culture is extremely toxic if you’re following the instructions of a man who is playing God,” says Hagan. “I’m like, I moved away from L.A., I broke up with the boy, like, just leave me alone!”
Hagan says that Haskell’s campaign against her got so bad she even contemplated suicide. “There was a lot of time that I did not want to be here anymore,” she confesses, adding, “I would say the worst moment was, I drank a lot of alcohol and I stood on top of my building. And if it wasn’t for my relationship with my parents, I probably would have made a very different decision than I did.”
In December 2017, journalist Yashar Ali published an exposé in the Huffington Post that included emails between Haskell and other high-ranking members of the Miss America Organization. In them, former Miss Americas were called “forever cunts” and “a pile of malcontents and has-beens,” they reveled in driving ex-Miss America Gretchen Carlson “INFUCKINGSANE,” and at one point Miss America lead writer Lewis Friedman and Haskell even joked that former Miss America Kate Shindle, who had been critical of Haskell’s high pay, should have died instead of Mary Ann Mobley. But they finally revealed, in black and white, what Haskell thought of Hagan. Haskell and Friedman joked about how they were “the only ones not to have fucked Mallory”; Haskell wrote that someone he knew who slept with Hagan “needs to have a blood test because we lost count of the number of men she slept with at 25”; Haskell referred to Hagan as “gross” and “huge,” and that he planned to “convince the Formers to ostracize her”; and Haskell and other Miss America execs reveled in how “our anti coaching initiatives are already impacting her business,” and that Haskell had undermined her relationship with his former agency, WME. Haskell called the reporting “dishonest, deceptive, and despicable” in a statement, while not rebutting any of its claims.
Dick Clark Productions (now owned by Rolling Stone parent company PMC) dropped Miss America following the article’s publication, while Haskell and a number of execs stepped down from the Miss America Organization. It was later revealed that Adams had leaked the emails.
“I felt really relieved, but that relief was replaced very quickly by anxiety,” says Hagan. “I personally felt a lot of responsibility for what happened next.”
