life for Hoyt Richards<\/a>, the subject of the new three-episode HBO documentary, \u201cBring Me The Beauties: A Model Cult.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cIf I hadn\u2019t lived it, I wouldn\u2019t have believed [my life story] myself,\u201d Richards exclusively told Page Six.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hoyt Richards (pictured in an undated modeling photo) was one of the first male supermodels, and he was secretly in a cult. <\/p>\n
Richards (pictured at the \u201cBring Me The Beauties\u201d premiere in 2026) said he wouldn\u2019t believe his story, if he hadn\u2019t lived it. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Richards, now 64, was one of the first male supermodels \u2013 rubbing elbows with the likes of Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and Fabio in the \u201880s and \u201890s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By day, Richards was jet-setting off to Europe for fashion shows and magazine spreads. Little did the public know \u2013 when he returned home to New York City, he wasn\u2019t living in a lavish penthouse. Instead, he was sleeping on the floor of a Midtown apartment with a handful of other Yuppies. He was also giving all his money away to Eternal Values, the cult he was a member of.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t great at accounting back in those days, but I would put it between 4 and 5 million,\u201d he told Page Six, referring to how much money he gave to cult leader Frederick von Mierers, who told everyone that he was an alien.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During his glamorous life in the modeling world, Richards said, \u201cI obviously could not [my peers] what I was involved with.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cult leader Frederick von Mierers (pictured) recruited impressionable young people with New Age beliefs. <\/p>\n
Richards was a male supermodel in the same sphere as Cindy Crawford (pictured in 1991). Getty Images<\/p>\n
The cult also discouraged friendships with outsiders.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I just felt like I was not being transparent and lying to everyone at all times\u2026I just kept telling myself, \u2018oh, eventually you\u2019re going to figure it out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Richards grew up in an ordinary Pennsylvania family. He met von Mierers in 1978, on a vacation to Nantucket when he was sixteen.<\/p>\n
Richards (pictured) attended Princeton University and came from a regular Pennsylvania family, before joining a cult. <\/p>\n
Richards didn\u2019t come to terms with the fact that he was in a cult until years later. <\/p>\n
Born Fred Meyers in Brooklyn, Frederick von Mierers reinvented himself as an upper crust Manhattan socialite, who reeled in insecure young people with his connections \u2014 he partied at Studio 54 \u2014 and his \u201cwisdom\u201d about New Age topics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Richards attended Princeton University, he stayed in touch with von Mierers. After graduating in 1985, as his modeling career took off, he became a member of von Mierers\u2019 cult, called Eternal Values.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would take enough money to pay my bills, and everything else I would hand over to Freddy,\u201d Richards told Page Six, referring to von Mierers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Richards said its common for people in cults to be in denial, through \u201cmagical thinking.\u201d <\/p>\n
Richards (pictured in the 80s) was a top model but gave about \u201c4 or 5 million\u201d dollars away to his cult, \u201cEternal Values.\u201d <\/p>\n
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He didn\u2019t think it was odd at the time, since it was the \u201cpolicy within the group, you gave whatever you could give.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Richards was in Eternal Values for fifteen years, and he didn\u2019t admit to himself that it was a cult until years after he left.\u00a0He has since relocated to LA.<\/p>\n
As his modeling career took off, he said, he believed at the time, \u201cit\u2019s because of this spiritual life I\u2019ve chosen\u2026that\u2019s what I thought was my secret sauce.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Richards said that kind of \u201cmagical thinking\u201d is common \u201cin the cult survivor space.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Richards (pictured in a modeling photo from the \u201990s) said he was aware of some of the bad things in the cult, but repressed those thoughts. Provided by publicist<\/p>\n
Richards (pictured on May 20, 2026) said he \u201cchose to avoid\u201d thoughts of how the cult was strange or wrong, at the time. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Von Mierers died of AIDS in 1990 at 43. In the \u201880s and \u201890s, he recruited models and attractive Yuppies to Eternal Values, and told them he was helping them prepare for a doomsday event to eventually lead a new society.<\/p>\n
At first, he preached celibacy, but later he changed his tune, and \u201cthere was a lot of sexual abuse\u201d in the cult, Richards recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When von Mierers talked about his kookier beliefs \u2013 like aliens \u2013 Richards told Page Six, \u201ceven when I was heavy in the group,\u201d his critical thinking was \u201cdiminished\u201d but \u201cstill operating\u201d enough to clue him in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just knew what was happening was wrong\u2026 potentially dangerous and bad.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Richards said he would \u201cself-censor\u201d information out. HBO Max<\/p>\n
Richards was a male supermodel in the heyday of top models like Naomi Campbell (pictured in 1991). Getty Images<\/p>\n
But, he added, he was \u201cdetermined\u201d to hold onto the \u201cnarrative\u201d that Eternal Values was spiritual.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would self-censor that information out,\u201d he explained.\u00a0\u201cAs much as I was influenced and brainwashed\u2026. I still knew at certain times. And, I chose to avoid those thoughts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added that part of his \u201chealing\u201d process has been to take \u201cownership.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBring Me The Beauties: A Model Cult\u201d is streaming on HBO Max and airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on HBO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supermodel by day, cult member by night.\u00a0 It sounds too strange to be true, but that was life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32235,2471,33130,157,68,6131,49430,4860,9,24,55,54,56,1869],"class_list":["post-254233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-cults","tag-documentaries","tag-docuseries","tag-entertainment","tag-exclusive","tag-hbo","tag-hbo-max","tag-models","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}