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Tyra Banks is offering her perspective in Netflix’s new docuseries Reality Check: America’s Next Top Model, but she’s not taking responsibility for the show’s controversial moments.
This three-part documentary brings together Banks, 52, alongside co-executive producer Ken Mok, judges Jay Manuel, Miss J. Alexander, and Nigel Barker, as well as former contestants to reflect on the reality competition that captivated viewers for 15 seasons from 2003 to 2018.
Among the stories revisited in Reality Check: America’s Next Top Model is that of Shandi Sullivan, a participant from cycle 2 who shares a disturbing experience during a trip to Milan. Sullivan, who was 21 at the time, recounts the night when a group of men was invited back to the contestants’ accommodation.
Sullivan reveals that after consuming “two bottles of wine,” she became severely intoxicated and suffered a sexual assault.
“I remember being in the shower, then sitting in the shower, and later being in bed,” Sullivan, who finished third in the season, recalled. “I blacked out for much of it. I didn’t even realize sex was happening.”
Explaining she woke up the next day and wondered “what the f**k happened last night,” the realization that she had cheated on her boyfriend “flooded” over her: “I just sat there and cried.”
Making matters worse, Sullivan was filmed revealing to her boyfriend that she had cheated — a moment so brutal that, she claimed, even the sound guy and camera man apologized for having to capture it.
When asked if production should have stopped it, Sullivan didn’t mince words. “I think after getting out of the hot tub, and whatever happened after that, I think they should have f*****g been like, ‘All right, this has gone too far,’” she shared. “‘Like, we get it. We got to pull her out of this.’”
Mok, 64, noted that the incident — which, he described, as “for good or bad, one of the most memorable moments in Top Model” — was scaled back for television, Banks explained she does “remember” Sullivan’s story, but she stopped short of taking the blame for the way it played out on television.
“It’s a little difficult for me to talk about production because that’s not my territory,” the Smize & Dream owner explained.
Meanwhile, in another moment, Manuel, 53, admitted he had reservations about the series’ first of two race-swapping photoshoots — and even asked to be excused from participating. However, Banks admits she didn’t initially “think” the photoshoot was “controversial.”
“I was in my own little bubble, in my own little head, that this was my way of showing the world that Brown and Black is beautiful,” the former model explained. “But then we put it out there and the world was like, ‘Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind?’”
One misstep that Banks does take ownership of? Telling Keenyah Hill that she should have used her “feminine wiles” when the cycle 4 contestant was being harassed by a male model during a photoshoot.
“I was trying to empower her with the information I had to say, ‘Tell him to back up and da-da-da and don’t be messing with up my s**t,’” Banks admits, noting: “I thought that was the best advice, but it should have been stomped down. And that’s what would happen today.”
“And so I say to Keenya, ‘Boo-boo, I am so sorry. None of us knew. Network executives didn’t know. And I did the best I could at that time,” she added. “But she deserved more.”
Banks also cops to going “too far” during her now-viral explosion on cycle 4 contestant Tiffany Richards, in which she screamed, “We were all rooting for you!” noting: “I lost it.”
Reality Check: America’s Next Top Model is streaming now on Netflix.