Source : the age
It’s judgment day for America’s Next Top Model and, true to form, it’s televised. When the reality show premiered in 2003, it promised to give viewers a glimpse behind the scenes into the modelling and fashion industries. However, the show – created and hosted by supermodel Tyra Banks and producer Ken Mok – soon became infamous for the extreme lengths it was willing to go to in order to shock its audience and make “good TV”.
Now, a slick three-part Netflix documentary, Reality Check: America’s Next Top Model, is unpicking the series, which ran for 24 seasons (or “cycles” in ANTM speak) and, at its height, drew more than 100 million viewers worldwide.
Directed by Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan (who also made the documentaries Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis and The Oslo Diaries), the series features interviews with the show’s central players, including Banks, Mok and former judges J.Alexander, Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, as well as a buffet of former contestants with axes to grind. Noticeably absent is acid-tongued former judge – and “diva” – Janice Dickinson.
Here are five of the biggest moments of the series, in which no one is innocent, everyone is talking smack, reputations are on the line, and stakes are high.
THE TYRA V TIFFANY INCIDENT
Reality Check opens with an iconic scene from season four, when Banks loses it at contestant Tiffany Richardson after she’s eliminated. “I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this!” Banks hollers. “I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU! WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!”
“I just wanted to change this woman’s life,” Banks reflects. “I felt like she could’ve been a supermodel.” But Banks’ redemption narrative seems reductive when pitted against witness testimony from on the set.
“Some of the things that were said were really not well-intentioned,” Manuel sighs. “I’ll probably never repeat the lines that were actually said in that room that day.”
Unfortunately, Richardson isn’t interviewed in Reality Check, but footage from the time suggests her relationship with Banks was tough. “If she loved me, she wouldn’t have showed it in the way she showed it,” she said, shaking her head. “If you love someone, you won’t humiliate them.”
“Tyra saw herself in that girl,” notes stylist and occasional judge Nolé Marin, as he clutches his chihuahua. “But it was very scary … the next week we had all the lawyers on set.”
THE BODY SHAMING
The modelling industry was built upon idealism and shame. So the idea a reality show such as ANTM could ever have been a beacon for self-esteem and empowerment is laughable – and Reality Check only serves to re-enforce this.
Watching the former judges look back and blame “the time” for the harsh public criticisms they made of contestants’ weights, stomachs, skin texture, hair coarseness, hip size, and teeth is cringeworthy. “Hindsight is 20/20,” Banks tells us. Barker, meanwhile, confesses: “Looking back, I would say that [things I said were wrong]. But at the time, I really didn’t think that.”
Equally awful is watching Dani Evans, from season six, relive the experience of being pressured by Banks into having her gap teeth “fixed” by a dentist. Initially, Evans stood her ground, loved her gap, and refused. Cut to Banks implying that Evans will be eliminated if she doesn’t go through with the procedure.
“There were agents that would tell me she will not work with those teeth,” Banks argues, despite being the one who created the series to show “all the different types of beauties” and to “fight against the fashion industry”.
So Evans did it. “I decided to play the game. And she won.” Ironically, the “stigma” of working in the fashion industry as an ANTM winner proved difficult. “I was never able to rise to the level I could have or should have,” Evans explains. “I was just viewed as this, like, ‘reality’ star.”
THE ALLEGED SEXUAL ASSAULT
It was the scandal that created global “model mayhem”. In 2003’s season two, blonde, bony, 21-year-old Walgreens worker Shandi Sullivan is flown to Milan for the series finale, where Sullivan is sent on “go-sees” to meet with designers, which takes “all day”.
Afterwards, along with her fellow contestants staying at Model House, Sullivan gets drunk on red wine with some Italians. Then, she “blacks out” and is allegedly sexually assaulted by one of the Italians.
The next day her boyfriend, Eric, back in Kansas, screams at Sullivan over the phone. And viewers got to watch. “I can’t be with someone that cheated on me!” Eric said. “We wanted to be together forever and you’ve thrown it away! You stupid bitch!”
No producers, camera operators, or models interfered. Mok insists the contestants were told they’d be filmed “24/7” and they were instructed to treat being on the show as, “a documentary”. Sullivan, on the other hand, thinks the crew should’ve “pulled her out”.
Banks implies she had nothing to do with how the incident was handled, writing it off as a “production” thing, despite appearing in Milan the next day, counselling the contestants about “fighting against their carnal desires”.
Judges J.Alexander and Manuel remain squeamish to this day. Sullivan has never recovered. Mok, meanwhile, maintains, “For good or bad, it’s one of the most memorable moments in Top Model.”
THE CONTROVERSIAL CHALLENGES AND PHOTO SHOOTS
Homelessness, blackface, gun violence, eating disorders, psych wards, flame throwing, reptiles, arachnids, funeral parlours, aerial feats, abattoirs, army drills, orgies: nothing and no one was off-limits when it came to ANTM’s challenges and photo shoots.
“It was a time in the world where there was Fear Factor and Survivor,” Banks explains. “The viewers wanted more, and more, and more.”
Ex-UPN executive Dawn Ostroff agrees. “As the cycles [seasons] went on, there was a constant pressure … how do you get that ‘I can’t believe they’re doing that’ moment again?’”
When the documentary makers ask Ostroff if she ever worried about any choices made on the show, she says no. “Good television is good television.”
Adds Manuel: “Reality TV is a bitch. If it doesn’t bleed and lead, then it doesn’t work.” Having said that, he really didn’t want to participate in the “race swap” shoot [where models were made up as different ethnicities to their own] for the Got Milk campaign. “If you really look for it, you can see it on my face,” Manuel points out. “I was double-swallowing … but I just had to do my job.”
THE JUDGES BEING ELIMINATED
ANTM’s contestants weren’t the only ones being brutally rebuffed in the name of “good TV”. In 2012, judges J.Alexander, Manuel and Barker were fired. Banks is quick to clarify that the decision wasn’t hers, even if headlines at the time said otherwise. “Bosses have bosses,” she says. “And the big boss was very clear … there are no sacred cows.”
But the changes that the “bosses” made ultimately led to the show’s demise; it moved solidly away from being a “glimpse” into the industry and toward histrionic reality TV.
There was “petite” ANTM, “college” ANTM, “Brits v Yanks” ANTM and “Boys” ANTM. At one point, the Kardashians made an appearance. Banks was fired before season 22. Singer Rita Ora hosted season 23. According to Vulture, ratings plummeted by 54 per cent. “All of these big changes kind of reeked of desperation,” observes journalist Zakiya Gibbons. “It was just writing on the wall.”
However, Banks maintains that she has a sixth sense for what works – and she can’t help leaving us wanting “more” at the end of Reality Check. “I can feel and taste what people want to see,” she purrs. “You have no idea what we have planned … for Cycle 25.”
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is now streaming on Netflix.
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