Heidi Klum turns off the glamour, turns on the goofy

Towering above her pint-sized cohort in blue suede heels, Heidi Klum was doing what she does best: seducing the camera.

She wasn’t preening sexily in lingerie, as you might expect from a former Victoria’s Secret model; nor was she standing in judgment of a couture gown, as befits the host and executive producer of “Project Runway.” On this particular day, the TV camera panned in as the German bombshell flailed her arms, stuck out her tongue and, yes, did the Roger Rabbit dance.

In one of this year’s strangest career transitions, Klum is shifting from glamorous to goofy. Her new Lifetime series “Seriously Funny Kids,” which premieres tonight, is the latest program to elicit candid and hilarious remarks from young kids, following in the footsteps of Bill Cosby (“Kids Say the Darndest Things”), Art Linkletter (“House Party”) and Allen Funt (“Candid Camera”).

Klum silenced doubters and proved her business acumen when she ushered in “Runway” in 2004 (which ran on Bravo before switching to Lifetime in 2009). Now the 37-year-old is trying to further cement her post-modeling persona — and her relationship with the network — with this even more unlikely project.

The weekly series catches Klum using her maternal appeal to mine the honesty of young children. Also incorporated into the show are hidden camera bits, including one that finds the sexy host sporting an unlikely accessory: “slimy boogers.”

“We thought it was a no-brainer,” said JoAnn Alfano, Lifetime’s head of entertainment. “As an ambassador for the network, we love being in business with [Heidi]. And it’s a side we don’t often see. She’s someone mostly known as a supermodel. You don’t think of her as being silly, and fun, and effervescent.”

Although she’s a mother to four children younger than 6, Klum admitted that her interactions with the kids on the show were more difficult than she expected.

“When you deal with grown-ups, they always kind of know where you want to go when you ask a certain question,” she said. “When you’re talking to Jay Leno or [David] Letterman, there’s this kind of routine about it. You’re there to tell a funny story as you try to promote something. But when you do it with kids, it doesn’t really work the same way. At all.”

Klum insisted that her involvement in “Seriously Funny Kids” doesn’t mean a death knell for “Project Runway,” which will shoot its ninth season this summer.

“Look, ‘Project Runway’ isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “And I don’t think if something ends that I have to hurry up and find the next thing. If ‘Seriously Funny Kids’ would have come to me four years ago, I would have done it then. I just thought it was a good idea.”

It’s an idea that further broadens her reach beyond the supermodel guise, in the vein of fellow-runway trotter Tyra Banks — who solidified herself as brand with “America’s Next Top Model,” “The Tyra Banks Show,” philanthropic foundations and a production company.

After more than a decade as a face (and body) of Victoria’s Secret, Klum announced last fall that she was parting ways with the lingerie giant to focus on other projects. A surprising move, but she said the decision came after careful consideration.

“It wasn’t like I’m going to walk down the runway with my G-string and then the next day I wasn’t going to do it anymore,” Klum said. “You think about it over the years and you think about how at some point it has to end — I have to do something different; I want to do something different. And the world doesn’t end. When someone hangs up their ‘wings,’ there’s always someone new ready to take them. That’s just how things are.”

Klum has a dizzying number of projects in motion. She recently announced plans to partner with fragrance company Coty Inc. to create a perfume called Heidi Klum Shine. She’s a clothing designer (recently fashioning maternity clothes for A Pea in the Pod and Motherhood Maternity), a jewelry designer (her Mouawad jewelry collection debuted on QVC in 2006), a television host (“Project Runway,” “Germany’s Next Top Model”) and the face of European cosmetics company Astor.

And on top of all of that, now she’s extracting comical quips from children for “Seriously Funny Kids” — and finding that they really do say the darndest things.

“Yesterday I was talking with a kid and she was like, ‘I know you! My mama told me that you sold panties!’ ” she recalled. “You can’t control what your legacy is.”

yvonne.villarreal@latimes.com