The 5 Biggest Bombshells From Netflix’s ANTM Doc, From Diabolical To Downright Distressing

By now you’ve probably gotten wind of Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, the three-part doco exposing the infamous TV series that landed earlier this week. 

While longtime fans may have been rooting, all rooting, for the doco to present some kind of redemption arc, the reality is a much more distressing look at the many well-known controversies that swirled the competition show, which ran from 2003 to 2018. 

Reality Check features interviews with ANTM producers, contestants and coaches including Tyra Banks, who delve into — or awkwardly skirt around — the scandals that have either aged like milk or prompted serious discussions in the years since it aired. 

From diabolical to downright problematic, here are the biggest bombshells dropped in Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. 

Fat-shaming and diet culture

The doco explores the culture of fat-shaming and disordered eating that was fostered on ANTM, placing at least some of the blame on Banks herself. 

It shows one throwback clip of Banks telling a model who was body-shamed by other contestants to “get a burger and take the bread off” (remember that milk I mentioned?), while another castmate, season ten’s Whitney Thompson, alleges in an interview that she was denied clothes in her size throughout her time on the show. 

Reality Check touches on the broader impact on this culture beyond the show by including a compilation of TikTokers criticising its fat-shaming elements, including one who claimed the show gave them a lifelong eating disorder. 

Perhaps trying to have its burger and eat, too, the doco also tries to acknowledge Banks’ attempts to welcome more diverse shapes into mainstream modelling, but it’s little consolation given the clips we’ve seen online.  

*Those* race-swapping and crime scene shoots

Those interviewed in the doco expressed major regrets over ANTM’s extremely off-colour model shoot concepts. That includes the two times — for reasons beyond comprehension — that models were made to “change their race” in seasons four and 13. 

In comments that have the milk curdling, Banks said in the doco that she “didn’t think it [the race-swapping] was controversial” at the time since it was her “way of showing the world that Brown and Black was beautiful”. Looking back, however, Banks said she now “understand[s] 100 per cent” why those shoots caused backlash.

She stopped short of apologising directly for those shoots — which for the record, basically turned white contestants into offensive caricatures via makeup and wigs. 

ANTM producer Ken Mok was more apologetic about the other contentious shoot which had models pose as — I kid you not — murdered crime scene victims in season eight.

“I take full responsibility for that shoot. That was a mistake. I look back now and think it was a celebration of violence. It was crazy. I look back and I’m like, ‘You were an idiot’,” Mok said in the doco. 

Contestants’ dental procedures

Contestants’ cosmetic procedures throughout the show also came up in the doco, including the dental work given to season six models Joanie Sprague and Danielle Evans. 

Banks heavily pressured both contestants to ‘fix’ their teeth during the makeover episodes. 

While they were initially hesitant, Sprauge ultimately underwent major dental surgery which included removing and filing down some of her teeth, while Evans got the gap closed — much to both of their later dismay.

“There’s still a bite issue that will never be fixed,” Sprague said in a doco interview, “it was fucked up.” Banks said in the doco that she “apologised for the issue” about Evans’ gap and claimed defensively that it was modelling agents who advised she fix it, but Evans called BS. 

“Bull-fucking-shit. Me getting my gap closed is not opening any doors for me. You [Banks] were making good TV at my expense,” the former contestant claimed. “It’s my life, and it was toyed with… consciously.”

Adding insult to injury, Banks insisted that another contestant cosmetically widen her tooth gap just a few seasons later, because that makes total sense. Let’s leave the teeth tinkering to the dentists, shall we?

Sexual assaults were filmed and allegedly ignored

While the prior misfires can be put down to ANTM regrettably being a product of its time or the industry it sat within — however cringe-worthy and problematic — a more serious and deeply troubling allegation arises in the doco when it covers the lack of protection given to contestants in vulnerable situations. 

Across multiple episodes in the doco, season two contestant Shandi Sullivan recounts the horrific ANTM episodes in which she was allegedly sexually assaulted while highly intoxicated on camera. 

The incident occurred when male models were invited back to Sullivan’s hotel room after a day of photoshoots in Milan. Sullivan told the documentary team that she had drunk two bottles of wine before the incident, after which “everything is just a blur”. 

“I remember him on top of me,” Sullivan recalled through tears. “I was blacked out for a lot of it. I didn’t even feel sex happening. I just knew it was happening, and then I passed out.” 

The entire ordeal was filmed and partially shown on TV, which Sullivan rightfully said should never have happened. “I think [producers] should have been like, ‘alright this has gone too far, we got to pull her out of this’,” Sullivan recalled.

Producers later framed the incident as Sullivan cheating on her boyfriend, who she called on camera to inform of the incident.

Mock was the only ANTM exec to answer for the incident in the doco, partially excusing it by saying producers “treated Top Model as a documentary”. 

A second alleged assault, which took place when season four’s Keenyah Hill was groped by a male model, also comes up in the doco. Hill voiced her discomfort in an episode, only to be told during judging that she mishandled the incident by not acting playfully with the model. 

“I say to Keenyah, boo-boo, I am so sorry,” Banks said reflectively in the doco. “None of us knew [how to handle that situation]. Network executives didn’t know, and I did the best that I could at the time. She deserved more.”

The viral “rooting for you!” moment was actually worse than what we saw

In an ANTM moment that now lives in viral infamy, Banks accosted season four contestant Tiffany Richardson with a monologue about “rooting for you, we were all rooting for you, how dare you?!”. It was already a confronting scene, but the doco reveals that what happened on set was actually much worse than what made it to TV. 

“There was a lot more that was really said and some of the things that were said were really not well-intentioned,” Mock claimed. “I will probably never repeat the lines that were said in the room that day.” 

Mock also revealed that lawyers were called on set the next time ANTM filmed because Banks “really scared us” with the meltdown.

For her part, Banks apologised and admitted she went “too far”, saying she “lost it” and that it came from “some Black girl stuff that goes real deep inside of me”. 

I’m inclined to say that revelation leaves us on a lighter note, but it seems we’ve learned that no light notes exist in the ANTM universe.

At least we still have Banks’ faint in season six, which is coincidentally exactly how I feel when reflecting on the show’s controversies.

Lead images: Netflix, UPN and X