New Netflix Doc Tells The Truth About America's Next Top Model — And It's Rough

This article contains discussions of disordered eating, mental health, and sexual assault.

If you're a person of a certain age, I'm willing to bet that you have some passing familiarity with "America's Next Top Model," the reality competition show hosted by actress and supermodel Tyra Banks. Now, a three-episode Netflix docuseries, "Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model," is showing the ugly truth of this televised quest for beauty and perfection. Much like the streamer's "Biggest Loser" doc, a lot of it is hard to watch, especially when it comes to Banks. 

In May 2003, the first "cycle" — the word this series uses instead of "season" — of "America's Next Top Model" officially premiered on UPN. The premise of the show is relatively simple: extraordinarily beautiful women are assembled like the Avengers to stand before a judgmental Banks — as well as a judging panel that included Jay Manuel, Miss J. Alexander, photographer Nigel Barker, and former models like Janice Dickinson and even Twiggy — and determine which one of them will become America's Next Top Model. The breathy, dramatic way Banks delivers the show's title during every judging ceremony is the stuff of legend, and by that I mean people make fun of it a lot.

I didn't start watching "ANTM" as soon as it premiered in 2003, but I definitely remember laughing about its sheer ridiculousness with my friends in high school and even college, throwing around Banks-isms like "smize" (smile with your eyes) and imitating the deranged, impromptu rage monologue that Banks bellows at contestant Tiffany Richardson in cycle 4. (More on that soon). Even back then, it was easy to see some of the show's worst missteps for what they were, but incredibly, "Reality Check" reveals even darker truths from this series' heyday.

I really cannot stress this enough — people watching "America's Next Top Model" when it originally aired in the 2000s knew that the show was often punitive and cruel to the young women competing for the titular prize of becoming a "top" "model" (something that, as we learn from cycle 6's Danielle Evans in the docuseries, wasn't even really true). During the infamous "makeovers" that happened early in each cycle, something horrible pretty much always happened (a lot of the time, aggressive hair bleaching left girls screaming in pain). In "Reality Check," two cycle 6 contestants — winner Evans and runner-up Joanie Dodds — recounted some of their more harrowing makeover moments. Both involved trips to the dentist.

Dodds had what the show referred to as a "snaggletooth," while Evans had a sizable gap in her front teeth. Because Tyra Banks repeatedly insisted that casting agents wouldn't go for Evans with a tooth gap, Evans gave in to the pressure and had it partially closed with the show's hired dentist. Banks still tried to justify this call in the docuseries, claiming she thought it was best for Evans' potential career. After some choice profanities, Evans cleared that up. "Me getting my gap closed is not opening any doors for me," she shot back. "You knew what you were doing for the show. You were making good TV at my expense." Dodds, meanwhile, got her snaggletooth "fixed" in a 12-hour dental surgery that left her with lifelong issues.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Disordered eating was encouraged. Aspiring models frequently got sick and fainted from dehydration and malnutrition. Their personal traumas were exploited. And Banks? She avoids accountability for all of it.

Tyra Banks appears in the documentary, but to say that she handles herself poorly is an understatement. She lightly apologizes for some incredibly serious incidents that the show exploited, brushed past, or both — including the sexual assault and sexual harassment of two contestants who appear in the docuseries, Shandi Sullivan from cycle 2 and Keenyah Hill from cycle 4 — but none of it feels geniune, and the way Banks treated her own friends and colleagues throughout the run of "America's Next Top Model" doesn't help. Nigel Barker, Jay Manuel, and Miss J. Alexander were all mistreated by her at various points before being fired from the show after cycle 18. When Alexander suffered from a stroke that left him unable to speak or walk, Barker and Manuel both visited him. Banks did not. (Alexander, a runway legend, can speak again and, as he says in the series, is determined to walk the catwalk again.)

It's not that anyone thought Banks was fair or even sane during the original run of "America's Next Top Model,"  but it's particularly heartbreaking to see contestants break down — including and especially Hill, who was constantly highlighted as "overweight" in cycle even though she was extremely thin, even being forced to portray "gluttony" and "an elephant" in challenges to drive the point home — and then watch Banks blithely announce a 25th cycle of the reality series. 

"Reality Check" exposed the dirtiest secrets of "ANTM," and even though people already figured out that this show didn't age well, nothing could have prepared former fans for the things revealed here. "Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model" is streaming on Netflix now.

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