Face Off! Coco Rocha Talks "The Face"

Two battles rage simultaneously on The Face, the new reality show on Oxygen centered on fashion models. Twelve contestants battle for supremacy in personality and posing, while three supermodel coaches duke it out to have her own team of four girls beat the others.  With the notorious Naomi Campbell in the mix, sparks will fly (and maybe a phone, too).

The other coaches—Karolina Kurkova and Coco Rocha—give The Face a generational dimension, with 18 years between Rocha (who is 24) and Campbell (42).

"What we say and do will surprise you," Rocha tells StyleNetwork.com. "I get emotional. There are moments when Naomi speaks to her team and discloses something we never knew."

The Face is as much about the young models learning their trade as it is about the three catwalk veterans, who have different ways of encouraging (or badgering) their wards. "America's Next Top Model has had an amazing 20 seasons, and people are still interested in this world," Rocha adds. "The Face is whole different way of showing the industry."

The first episode, which airs on February 12 (smack in the middle of New York Fashion Week), chronicles a shoot by Patrick Demarchelier (a Vogue regular) that is judged by W magazine editor Stefano Tonchi. It doesn't get much higher up in terms of industry prestige.

Rocha, who in her spare time breaks in new models in consulting gigs at modeling agencies, was a natural choice for the series. "A lot of new girls are either nervous in front of the camera or they have too much confidence, and think that being pretty is enough," she says. "I teach them to give the performance of their lifetime on a shoot. You don't have to always be sexy or fierce. You can be goofy. Whatever it takes to make the photographer say, ‘I want to work with that girl again.'"