At first, it's hard to believe that Robin Antin is 46 years old. It's not that the creator of the Pussycat Dolls looks especially young, it's that she sounds like she's still in high school. While telling me about The Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious, the second season of her competitive reality show (airing Tuesdays on MuchMusic), Antin's sentences run on so long and are filled with so many "y'knows" that I'm not always sure what she's talking about.

When asked about rapper Lil' Kim's role as a judge on the show, Antin replies, "Lil' Kim is really, I mean, she's there for, like, mostly for, like, you know, it's like, she's really helping."

Yeah, thanks for clearing that up.

"The only thing, I mean, because I'm, y'know, in, the thing that I would compare it to in the same way would be that I'm looking for the hottest, sexiest, best dancer, best singer; y'know, like, I'm looking for all that, y'know," she continues.

I do know, but only after going over that sentence a few times to decipher it. While the first season of Antin's show searched for just one girl to join the Pussycat Dolls, Antin is using the second season to find five girls for an all-new girl group called, you guessed it, Girlicious. Assembling a new act is vastly different from finding a single person to fit into an already-established pop group, but Antin sees the second season as a way to tell her own story.

"I love the name Girlicious. It reminded me of something very girly but sexy, y'know, sort of mixing the words 'girls' and 'delicious,'" Antin explains, in case we didn't understand her thought process. "When Season 2 came around, I said, 'I really wanna do this, I wanna do it on, y'know, show, like, the world, really, how it is that I do this. How did I create the Pussycat Dolls? What did it take to start a girl group?"

When you get past all the "likes" and "y'knows," it becomes clear that, for Antin, The Search for the Next Doll and Girlicious aren't just publicizing the groups she created; the shows are meant to publicize how awesome Antin herself is. The Pussycat Dolls are hugely successful, sure, but before the reality show, hardly anyone knew who Antin was. Now, she's getting the recognition she feels she deserves.

This attitude comes through in her answers, particularly when she talks about making decisions with the show's other judges.

"If I feel strongly about something, I’m really gonna, in the end, say, 'You know what? It comes down to me,'" she says. "Because I am the creator of it. I am the visionary."

It's easy to laugh at her "visionary" comment – the deluded ego of a stupid pop group creator, right? But Antin isn't stupid; far from it. Regardless of what you think of their music, the Pussycat Dolls have sold more than seven million albums and are one of the most popular groups in the world. Antin created an extremely lucrative business model and got rich from it. The Pussycat Dolls might be simplistic and a little sleazy, but they make money. Antin understands that pretty, scantily-clad female dancers can sell a lot of albums and she figured out how to use reality television to make herself even more successful. Antin is a shrewd business woman, which is why it's disconcerting to hear her talk like such a bimbo.

More proof that Antin isn't stupid comes when she discusses the outcome of the first season. On the final episode of The Search for the Next Doll, she chose 18-year-old single mother Asia to join the group. However, Asia soon turned down the offer, meaning that after eight episodes, the Pussycat Dolls hadn't really accomplished anything. Antin actually anticipates my question before I've even asked it, and she wastes no time putting a positive spin on Asia's departure.

"You know that [Asia] went on to do her own thing. So that was unexpected, but when it happened, I understood. She's a young girl, she has a child and she's like a child herself," she says. "I'm absolutely not at all disappointed in my decision from last season. I really am actually pleased with it and it worked out for the best."

She also updates me on the runners-up from The Search for the Next Doll: Antin put Chelsea into yet another girl group called the Paradiso Girls, and Melissa S. is expected to begin performing at the Pussycat Lounge in Las Vegas.

This, too, is revealing. Even though Asia quit the Pussycat Dolls, Antin did not have Chelsea or Melissa S. take her place. Why not, when they certainly had plenty of fans? Because Antin isn't stupid. Regardless of their talent, to put either of those girls into the group now, after they'd already been rejected, makes it look like Antin made a mistake the first time around. If she made a mistake, that means that something was wrong with the competition and, possibly, something was wrong with Antin herself. Visionaries can't make mistakes, and Antin wants recognition for her work.

That's why Girlicious is the perfect next step for Antin. She can reuse the exact same formula she used for the Pussycat Dolls, meaning that it's likely to succeed, but now she'll get all the credit she didn't get the first time.

"My vision is just that I wanted to do something that was inspired by the Pussycat Dolls but a little bit more sort of, like, young, kind of urban sort of twist on it, y'know?" Antin says. "But I'm really creating a girl group, y'know, so you really get to see that."


The Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT, 9 p.m. MT on MuchMusic.

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