‘From Misfits to Bullies’: How America’s Next Top Model Became Toxic | documentary

Even for those who don’t watch the show religiously, there’s a scene on America’s Next Top Model that went from reality TV crap to widespread fame.

It happens when Tyra Banks, the model-turned-TV mogul, loses her cool in spectacular fashion at Tiffany Richardson’s competition, after her post-elimination reaction is misconstrued as something that could be read as ungrateful. “I’ve never screamed at a girl like that in my life!” she screams. “When my mother screams like that, it’s because she loves me. I was rooting for you, and we were too. All rooting for youHow dare you!

The confrontation may have occurred in 2005, before gifs and memes became deeply ingrained in our culture, but it has managed to survive and morph, and is a copy-and-paste phrase that can easily be found on many social media pages. However, it doesn’t take much to know that something darker was going on in the scene and that something darker was happening off-camera.

“There’s been a lot that’s been said already,” says Jay Manuel, one of Tyra’s former on-screen men, in a new docu-series. “I’ll probably never repeat the lines that were actually said in the room that day… People tried to make it funny but it really wasn’t.”

The re-evaluation of America’s Next Top Model, from revolutionary reality show to hotbed of toxicity, has been happening slowly in the years since it ended, but it has gained momentum during the pandemic when many of us have had more TV time on our hands. It’s not as if the millennials who grew up with the show, which aired from 2003 until 2018, weren’t aware of how problematic it was, but it took a younger generation to look at it with fresh eyes, and what Banks now calls a “2020 lens,” to bring about social media accounts. The YouTube parade of panic and TikTok meltdowns of particularly egregious scenes (body shaming, racism, and pretty much everything judge Janice Dickinson said) forced Banks, who created the show and has hosted it for 22 of its 24 cycles, to respond. Excerpts, from panels or elsewhere online, showed that she was overly defensive, highlighting the good in an attempt to cover up the bad, but it wasn’t enough, and in the end, she agreed to be part of Netflix’s three-part series Reality Check, the most objective autopsy of ANTM to date.

“There was a lot of beauty in that show,” co-director Moore Lushy told The Guardian in a video interview. “There was a lot of ugliness on this show. But let’s talk about all of it.”

It is understandable why banks would have an initial incentive to play defense. She grew up in the fashion industry at a time when very few Black women were allowed in, and while she opened doors (she was the first Black woman to front the front of Sports Illustrated and GQ and was one of the very few women of color to achieve supermodel status) she also had a lot of things closed to her. “I would come home and feel defeated,” Banks says of her first days as a model in Paris. “I was constantly told no, you can’t do this because you’re black. There weren’t a lot of black models at that time. We were paid a lot less just because of the color of our skin.”

The idea for a reality show about supermodels — which came up during The Real World’s take on American Idol — was her way of not only finding “revenge,” as she calls it, but also showing that diversity within the industry was essential. The process of trying to sell it to a network led to further disapproval for Banks (the models were seen as “unsympathetic” characters) but after it was finally sold to Paramount’s UPN affiliate, it was a surprise ratings success and provided the disenfranchised young majority audience with something extraordinarily relatable.

But while the show presented the idea of ​​diversity — women of color, queer and trans contestants, plus-size models — it also upheld the same standards that Banks was apparently objecting to.

“They started out as misfits with very good intentions,” says co-director Daniel Sivan. “They started out as vandals, but as they got stronger, they became bullies.”

The series documents how Banks and her panel of judges, including two gay men of color like Guy Manuel and J. Alexander known as Miss J (another revolutionary addition at the time), found ways to make magnetic television (at its height, the show was seen in 170 countries) but often at the expense of the women, as young as 18, at its center. “They did these girls so dirty,” an influencer says in a montage clip.

The ways in which this has been done so sloppily go from micro to macro and discrediting to downright serious. There was Dani Evans who was told she needed to close her gap in teeth in order to stay on the show, something she eventually allowed them to do as part of a “change” (“It’s my life and it’s been consciously manipulated,” she says, while Tyra says she was “between a rock and a hard place” when she offered the advice). There was Kenyah Hill, who went from being bullied at school for being too skinny to overeating, and was relegated to a harshly edited story (comments ranged from “looks like a boy without the boobs” to “Kenyah… needs “To lose weight”). There was Dionne Walters, who had to pose as a shooting victim in “Crime Scene” a week after she told producers that her mother had been shot years earlier (“I think they wanted to see some kind of mental breakdown,” she says).

There was a weight test for contestants in previous seasons, which made young women like Shannon Stewart, who had an eating disorder, more aware of her body. There was also the infamous “race swap” week that saw female contestants wearing make-up and styling like other races, a truly shocking clip that must be rewatched (“This was my way of showing the world that brown and black are beautiful,” Banks says of her initial intention before later admitting, “It’s a problem and I 100% understand why”).

Then there was Shandi Sullivan, who said that what was portrayed as a drunken indiscretion with a model was actually a sexual assault and the cameras kept filming anyway (“No one did anything to stop it,” she says, crying).

“It was definitely one of the toughest interviews I’ve ever done in my life,” says Lucchi. “It was really a red line that was crossed in so many ways.”

One of the series’ most chilling moments is the shameful defense of the decision to keep the camera running, not only during the assault but after Shandi tearfully calls out to her boyfriend. The filmmakers were filming a “documentary” so they shouldn’t have interrupted what was happening.

“Being a documentary filmmaker doesn’t mean getting out of jail free,” Sivan says. “Even in this interview, which Mo did, Shandi broke down in tears and Mo said cut and we stopped because you don’t keep filming because it’s good television.”

When asked about this particular incident, Banks said, “It’s a little difficult for me to talk about production because that’s not my field.”

Banks wasn’t alone in making Top Model, of course, as the show became a collaboration between her and producer Ken Mok as well as network participants. It makes blame “complicated,” says Losi. The women they spoke to clearly felt a great deal of anger toward Banks, who flipped between protective housewife and disloyal boss, but the show existed in a devastating pop culture moment in which women’s bodies were being scrutinized and ridiculed, and it was reality TV in the era of the Wild West (“You guys were demanding it,” Banks says. “Viewers wanted more and more and more”). Banks was an easy man to fall for, according to Lucci and Sivan.

“Tyra was one of the only women who were models at that time,” Sivan says. “The misogyny goes both ways, and not just to justify the damage done on the show.”

“The whole concept of telling someone she’s too fat wasn’t even a bad slur at the time. It was just part of the culture. And teasing people, having a man grab a woman’s butt is something you would see in Home Alone 2, it was a joke,” he adds.

There may now be a more formal duty to sponsor some reality shows, but is our culture, with social media now a dominant force, much better now?

“He did the show and showcased many different images of beauty,” says Sivan. “And now, even when you look at Instagram, everything is supposed to be very democratic, everyone is very thin, fit, goes to the gym, has plastic surgery. Our daughter is obsessed with make-up and is 10 years old.”

Banks shows more self-awareness than we’ve seen from her before when she talks about the problems that have arisen. She even addressed the uncomfortable clip of her screaming at Tiffany. “I went too far,” she admits. “I lost it. Maybe it was bigger than her. I lost it. Family, friends, community, Black girls, all the challenges we face. A lot of people say we’re not good enough. I think it was all in that moment. Those are some Black girl things that run deep inside me, but I knew I went too far.”

Perhaps her most surprising admission is that we may not have seen the end of America’s Next Top Model. “You have no idea what we have planned…for Cycle 25,” she says.

When I asked Loshi and Sivan if they think the show might actually come back, they seemed certain that the participants would want to do it again. “Cycle 25 is Tyra’s dream,” Sivan says. “I think this is also the judges’ dream. I think they all want to do another round.”

Lushy admits that even in her research, in which she watched all 24 courses, she still understood why it worked. “I couldn’t stop watching,” she says. “It still works even with today’s lenses and I enjoyed every second of it.”

But is it possible to resurrect and avoid the same problems? What will this show look like in 2026?

“Our only advice is that if anyone revives this show, I hope they focus more on the personality of the contestants and not on their looks,” says Sivan.