KC beauty meets the geeks

A new edition of the reality show “Beauty and the Geek” starts tonight, and a local beauty queen is among eight women chosen to compete with eight Nerdly Nerdlingtons for a $250,000 prize.

Andrea Ciliberti, the 2005 Miss Missouri USA, was picked after her friend, St. Joseph weathercaster Nima Shaffe, dragged her along to an audition. “I'm so excited to see it,” said Ciliberti, 23, who was calling from the parking lot of her family's restaurant, Sorrento's, in the Northland.

In “Beauty and the Geek,” which airs at 7 CT tonight on the CW (KCWE-29), each of the “gorgeous but academically impaired women,” as CW publicity calls them, is paired with one “brilliant but socially challenged” guy. If the pair can survive a series of social and intellectual challenges -- as well as each other -- they will claim the jackpot.

Naturally, you wonder what Ciliberti thinks about being typecast this way. In her interview with producers (Shaffe said it went “way longer than any other girl's”), she froze up when asked what hydrogen and oxygen combine to make.

“For some reason I said air,” Ciliberti said. “When you get asked several questions at once there's bound to be one you get stumped on.”

Her associate's degree from Maple Woods Community College and her focus on small business accounting suggest she's anything but an airhead. Ciliberti plans to give TV a run for the money before completing her education. She doesn't have an agent but that hasn't stopped her from doing just about every modeling gig in Kansas City, from TV commercials to Hallmark cards.

As for life in the reality-TV bubble, there were few dull moments and things even got, in her words, “hot and heavy” among some of the contestants.

“I was surprised to see the actual amount of reality,” Ciliberti said. “This show is all real. They don't prompt you to say anything.”