As a die-hard fan of America’s Next Top Model (and, as far as I know, the only person in my orbit who actually watched all 24 seasons), I was super excited to see that Netflix was doing a documentary on the show. Of all the streaming services, Netflix gets it right the most often when it comes to turning the clock back to tell a true story from the beginning. Most of the time, those are crime documentaries, but it could be said that ANTM is a crime against television, so I happily binged it. Say what you want about Tyra and the conspiracy theories over how much control she has over the doc (she’s not listed as a producer on this), I was satisfied with the outcome.
These are my top ten takeaways. Some are revelations of things I didn’t know and others are realizations of things I did know to some extent and either forgot or gained a new context for. Obviously, there are spoilers, so don’t read if you don’t want to know some of the things that will appear in the series.
10. Cycle 25
Tyra is bringing this show back. Which explains the documentary and puts the whole project into a different light. The whole world decided to slice through old ANTM with a scalpel which did two things: highlight the awful components that we glossed over when it was airing and boost the show back into relevancy. That second part boosts Tyra herself back into relevancy, because she can try to make that ice cream shop pop off as many times as she wants to, she is not going to reach the level of fame she had when she was carrying UPN on her back. As a narcissist, she definitely needs that, and she’s coming at this from a position of “all press is good press.” If people are talking about the show, then she can bring it back! But to get people to watch the new one, she needs to rehab the old one. I do not believe Tyra Banks would have participated in any documentary whatsoever if she hadn’t been looking to capitalize on its current notoriety by producing a new season.
9. Jay Manuel isn’t Latino.
Mr. Jay, one of the most beautiful men to ever be captured on a reality television show camera, is not a Latino!
In the doc, we learn how uncomfortable he was with the “race-swapping” episode of ANTM, partly because of his South African heritage and that was the first I’d heard of this, at my big age. Digging just a tiny bit into it, his mother is Italian-Czech, and his father is South African of Malay heritage. So, colonialism and global commercialism is bad in so many ways, but people that spring up as a result oftentimes win the genetic lottery. Look at Brazil.
8. Nigel Barker was hired because UPN wanted a hot, straight, white man on the panel.
Since we’re talking about hot men, it was refreshing to see Nigel Barker express full understanding of why he was hired. He was there to be charming, eye-candy for the girls, and he played his role quite well.
Paraphrasing his words, but he admitted that he didn’t have to be funny or mean — he could just be. And that’s part of being a Straight White Man that so often goes unsaid. The rest of us have to both tick a box and fit in a box. We have to have a “character” that defines our marginalization while they can simply do their job and exist, and that’s enough to bring to the table. I thought it was very open for both Nigel and Mr. Jay to talk about it in plain terms without sugar-coating it. Mr. and Miss Jay were the draw. They were the stars. But they weren’t the right kind of entertainment for the corporate higher ups to hedge their bets on the longevity of the series.
7. ANTM was groundbreaking queer representation.
I didn’t realize it at the time, because I was just trying to survive in the South as my own version of Miss Jay. It actually didn’t click to me until watching this doc how groundbreaking it was to have a 6-foot-tall, dark-skinned, effeminate man with strong features prancing around in slips and high heels teaching cis women how to walk. When they were developing the show and told Tyra she needed to have mentors and judges, she described a runway coach who taught her how to walk, and everyone assumed it would be a woman. But here comes Miss Jay.
Mr. Jay was her first call, and Miss Jay was her second, and the two Jays’ relationship with Tyra formed the core of the show. I can only imagine what the two of them went through together. It was only alluded to on the show when Mr. Jay referenced how they protected each other, and as long as it was the two of them, it was “Gay Wonder Twins Activate!” and they could face the criticism.
I also didn’t realize how forward it was to have Ebony in the first cycle being filmed with her partner. Of all the participants, I think Ebony surprised me the most because I didn’t expect to see her and I didn’t realize she’d had such a varied experience.
The emotional whiplash of her story from high highs (seeing herself as beautiful on a billboard after spending a childhood with the nickname Ugly) to low lows (being essentially outed without a discussion, judged differently because of her skin) was really powerful and I’m impressed by how she’s able to speak about it.
6. They didn’t always choose the best picture.
I knew this. I just didn’t really pay attention to the fact that I knew this. But I knew this while I watched the show. In my logical mind, there was no way some of those photos could possibly be the best one out of 20. I was roaming around bars with a Fujifilm digital camera and uploading every single one to a Facebook album (back when it was College Only) after a night out, and some of those shots were stunning. And you’re telling me a model, with full hair and glam, in front of both a professional photographer and a creative director, couldn’t produce better than a Fujifilm at 2am stumbling out of Art Bar?
So I knew this, but I was surprised that they admitted to it in the show. It serves as a reminder that if your competition show is based on subjective criteria where there is a judge or a panel of judges, there will always be room for production to creative a narrative that serves the show first and the competition second. From Drag Race (at the extremely produced end) to Project Runway (at the other end of the spectrum), there is no judging panel show where production plays zero part in the outcome. ANTM gave us a good reminder of that.
5. Dani and Chanel Iman were in model housing together.
Not the most groundbreaking revelation, but more so another confirmation of what we knew: Top Model was a handicap. We still know Eva and Yaya’s names not because they became big models but because they pivoted away from modeling and into other areas of entertainment. Other than Winnie Harlow, I don’t know any of the Top Model girls strictly from modelling and that’s where the show should have prepared them better. ANTM was a springboard to fame, but it was going to severely handicap any modelling ambitions you had. Hearing that Dani Evans and Chanel Iman were signed to the same agency, at the same time, living in the same model housing but Chanel became a supermodel while Dani didn’t have any casting auditions for a year even though she won Top Model is all the confirmation you need.
The girls were not being taken seriously by the industry and were outright discriminated against for appearing on the show because Top Model made you too famous to be a model back then. Today, that notoriety is great. Brands would kill for that kind of footprint because you can turn it into social media dollars. Back then, the model still needed to be secondary to the clothes or the campaign, and having an ANTM girl in your shoot would make that the focus of the story instead.
Sidenote: it wasn’t mentioned on the show but Dani Evans has a hat line. I found it when the doc was first announced and I started looking up “where are they nows?” on my favorite contestants. It’s called Monrowe and it seems to be doing well — she had a hat pop up in And Just Like That.
4. Using trauma for a photoshoot was not uncommon.
In 2005, Cycle 4 contestant Kahlen learned that her friend had passed away just hours before that week’s photoshoot. The shoot was in a grave and her pain was very real.
Producers explained it away, noting that the shoots were planned in advance and they wouldn’t have been able to alter it on such short notice.
Okay, we gave them a pass.
A few years later in Cycle 8, they did a photoshoot where the models were crime scene victims. In the previous episode, Jael learned that one of her friends had just died of a heroin overdose, and then she had to pose as a corpse for the next shoot.
Producers explained it away using the same logic — they couldn’t change the shoot after just learning that information right along with Jael.
What I didn’t know is, in that very same episode, Dionne was given “gunshot victim” as her crime scene photo while her mother had been paralyzed from the waist down by a gunshot.
An ex, jealous that her mother was moving on with her life, shot her, which is why Mom appears in a wheelchair later in the season. Because those episodes are so far apart, it never clicked to me how insensitive it was to have Dionne as a gunshot victim, and producers couldn’t use the same excuse they used for Kahlen and Jael. In the doc, we learn that Dionne told production about her mother during the audition. Even if the shoot was planned in advanced, there was no way that Dionne was assigned “gunshot victim” before she was even cast on the show. They assigned roles to the girls afterward. And they intentionally gave her that character to portray.
3. Miss Jay is recovering from a stroke.
After teaching countless women how to walk, Miss Jay is currently unable to do so after suffering a stroke in 2022. The entire segment where we learn about J. Alexander’s recent health battle is both heartbreaking and endearing. Seeing Nigel and Mr. Jay rally around him was so beautiful and it shows that the three of them weren’t just co-workers.
Hearing that Tyra has not even visited him and instead has only sent a text confirms a lot of what we suspect about Tyra.
2. Tyra wouldn’t let Mr. Jay quit, and she also wouldn’t save his job.
After Cycle 8, Jay Manuel had had enough and wanted to move on with his career in a different direction. Tyra bullied him into staying. Without saying the words, she let him know that he would be blacklisted from the industry if he left ANTM, so he stayed. Year after year, his was role was reduced so that by the end of his tenure on Top Model, he was no longer the creative director of the shoots and had zero input into the show at all. He was just on air talent, there to provide familiarity on a rapidly declining show that had strayed far away from its original premise. But he stayed, cycle after cycle, because he didn’t want to bite the hand that had fed him.
And then suddenly, not only was he fired, but fired publicly in breach of everything they’d agree to behind closed doors. I thought the official story is that Top Model had fired Miss Jay and Nigel, and Mr. Jay walked away in solidarity. The way the show tells it, the three of them were fired as a group in order to create drama and hopefully bring curious eyeballs back to the show to see what it would be like without the three of them. Because they’d given so much to the show, the different camps worked out a generic statement of separation so that the show wouldn’t be harmed and The Jays + Nigel could continue their professional careers without a black mark on their record.
Instead, there was a “leak” to Page Six telling the world they got fired.
Tyra maintains that this came from above her. The network wanted to shake it up, and instead of sticking her neck out to save her friends (or be fired with them) she simply went along with the firing. The fact that it has taken until now for her to even say she will call Mr. Jay says way more than was actually said in the documentary. She has had years and years to make it right with the people who launched the second act of her career and not only would she not go into any detail about the breakdown in her relationship with Mr. Jay after he tried to quit, she refused to speak about it at all.
Nasty work!
1. Tyra re-traumatized Shandi Sullivan on purpose.
Shandi Sullivan was going to win ANTM Cycle 2.
I remember the cycle well, and there is no way anyone would have beat her if she hadn’t cheated on her boyfriend in Milan on national television. That part I knew. Three parts I did not know:
- Shandi does not remember the event. She blacked out sometime in the hot tub and only came to semi-consciousness with a man on top of her. Cameras caught it all because, in Ken Mok’s view, they were making a documentary, and the girls knew what they had signed up for. So there is video footage of a sexual assault in Viacom’s vault. And Top Model was fully prepared to air more of it, but Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl fiasco had recently happened and they had to quickly re-edit the episode because broadcast television had clamped down so tightly on what could be shown.
- Tyra maintains that she has no say in story or production, but even if that’s true, I’m sure story and production have some say over Tyra. After the event, Tyra is hanging out with the girls, and randomly brings up a story about how a male model cheated on her in Milan. Wow! What a coincidence! In the doc, you can see that it is so clearly planted as a nudge to get Shandi to not only discuss the event but to admit that she cheated so the camera’s could capture it. Then, the producers forced her to discuss the event with the Milano and ask him about STDs on camera.
- Shandi never saw the episode. She couldn’t watch it because it was too traumatizing for her. So, when Tyra asked some of the girls to appear on her talk show, Shandi told Tyra that she had never seen it and doesn’t want to. Tyra then proceeded to play the clip for her and the audience to remind everyone what happened. Shandi looked down the entire time and instead of handling the situation with any sort of grace, Tyra asked Shandi why she had her head down, knowing full well that it’s because she asked y’all not to play that and you did it anyway.
I don’t love looking back at America’s Next Top Model through current eyes. There is a lot of media that didn’t age well, but it makes people feel good to be over-reactionary about it to virtue signal that they are better than the people before them as opposed to accepting that they benefit from living in a time where some things are no longer acceptable. The reactions of modern eyes to old television can range from absurdly soapboxy (having “the blackface” episode of The Golden Girls pulled from Hulu because younger generations lack any ability to use nuance in artistic critique) to rightfully damning (recognizing the fact that Tamra Judge was intentionally trying to set up Gretchen to be sexually assaulted by Tamra’s mouthbreathing son in early Real Housewives of Orange County).
The reactions to America’s Next Top Model fall somewhere in between the absurdly soapboxy and the rightfully damning. For every valid critique of using trauma against the girls and creating unnecessary conflict for plus-size contestants to make good TV, there are critiques from ragebaiters who want us to pretend the race-swapping episode is the worst thing to ever happen on television.
For all the negative things you can say about Tyra Banks being a narcissist, it doesn’t divorce her or the show from the fact that it existed at a different time where the television and pop culture landscapes where different. People were eating bugs on TV for our entertainment. There was an entire television series dedicated to giving massive plastic surgery to perfectly normal-looking women and then holding a beauty contest to determine who was the prettiest after the magic scalpel of Terry Dubrow and friends. And, we all kept watching it.
To the talking heads in the show, the TikTokers, and the viewers looking back who pretend they had such a huge problem with America’s Next top Model when it aired, I have one question: did you stop watching it? For whatever modern take you want to have on a 20-year-old show where Episode X or Challenge Y pissed you off so much that you have to tell the internet about it today, did it piss you off enough to stop watching the next episode?
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