To the extent that America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) is remembered today, it is largely for the notorious 2005 scene in which model-turned-presenter Tyra Banks loses her temper with contestant Tiffany Robinson. “I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this,” she bawls at Robinson, who committed the unforgivable sin of not being gushingly grateful for her time on Banks’s reality circus. “When my mother yells like this, it’s because she loves me. I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you, how dare you.”
Banks expresses regret for her treatment of Robinson during Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, Netflix’s shocking and brilliantly skewering look back at the series and its dubious treatment of the dozens of young women to whom it dangled the opportunity of fame. “I went too far,” Banks says. “I lost it.”
“Tiffany-gate” is one of many questionable moments laid bare in this rivetingly stomach-turning three-part documentary. The most unforgivable is surely the public humiliation of series two contestant Shandi Sullivan, who describes how the sexual assault she suffered during a segment in Italy was framed as a boozy indiscretion.
She wonders why the producers didn’t step in. Instead of supporting her, they ran with the storyline that she had cheated on her boyfriend and filmed her calling him and saying she had slept with another man. Years later, when she appeared on Banks’s talkshow, she says Banks went against her wishes by replaying footage of her in a hot tub on the night of the incident. “I told you behind the scenes, I don’t want to see it,” Sullivan says. “You didn’t respect that at all.”
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That the contestants were regarded as simply chum to be thrown to the sharks is reinforced by photoshoots involving race swapping and the case of a model whose mother was stabbed, who was required to participate in a fashion spread where she pretends to have been attacked with a knife. Another contestant, Danielle Evans, recalls being pressured into having the “gap” in her front teeth “fixed”, and Keenyah Hill talks about fat shaming and how she was blamed when she spoke out about a male model behaving inappropriately during photoshoots.
“I was trying to empower her,” says Banks, who apologises to Hill. “I am so sorry. I did the best I could at the time, she deserved more.”
Alongside Banks, the film-maker interviews judges Jay Manuel, J Alexander, and Nigel “noted fashion photographer” Barker, as well as producer Ken Mok. A line repeated over and over is that America’s Next Top Model – which aired from 2003 to 2018 – was a reflection of its time, and that the behaviour it condoned and supported would not pass muster today.
There is a bittersweet coda when Manuel and Barker meet Alexander, who had a stroke in 2022 and has yet to fully regain his power of speech and ability to walk. Alexander is moved by their visit, adding that, while Banks has texted, she did not come to see him in the hospital.
Banks today spends much of her time in Australia, where she runs an ice-cream parlour. She frames her America’s Top Model experience as an opportunity to learn, thanking anyone who has “called her out” over her missteps and appears to genuinely believe the show was a force for good. With Banks having sold the fairytale of overnight fame in the fashion industry with ANTM, the film leaves it to the viewer to decide whether the biggest lies of all are the ones she is telling herself.
