Reality Check: Inside Americas Next Top Model is rage bait. We watched it so you dont have to.

Make no mistake. Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model wouldn't exist without hatewatchers on TikTok.

Though America's Next Top Model premiered in 2003, content creators on TikTok have been looking back on the competition show with damning critiques of its problematic photo challenges, fat-shaming tactics, and the harsh words from the show's panel of judges. First, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model delves into these critiques, featuring TikTok snippets to give a sense of the avalanche of criticism. Then, Reality Check's directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan (also co-executive producers) offer new interviews with ANTM host Tyra Banks, plus former ANTM judges — including photographer Nigel Barker, photoshoot director Jay Manuel, and runway walk coach Miss J. Alexander — where they're asked to face the TikTok critiques on camera.

I watched all three episodes of Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, totaling just shy of three hours. Props to Loushy and Sivan, this mini-series has a sensational understanding of its audience, who want to see not only the ANTM's most shocking moments but also the famous judges answering for them. And while this doc is definitely tapping into hate-watching, Reality Check satisfies by asking the hard questions — even if the answers leave much to be desired.

Who is interviewed in Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model?

Among the show's judges, Tyra Banks, Miss J. Alexander, Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, and model manager Nolé Marin give talking-head interviews. Also featured in new interviews are director/developer Ken Mok and TV executive Dawn Ostroff. 

Former contestants also share their story in Reality Check, including Ebony Haith (Cycle 1), Giselle Samson (Cycle 1), Joanie Sprague (Cycle 6), Whitney Thompson (Cycle 10), Dani Evans (Cycle 6), Bre Scullark (Cycle 5), Dionne Walters (Cycle 8), Keenyah Hill (Cycle 4), and Shandi Sullivan (Cycle 2). They share insights into the brutal truth behind their reality TV experiences, and it's not pretty.

Who's not interviewed in Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model?

The most notable absences are Janice Dickinson and Tiffany Richardson, who both have segments dedicated to their time on the reality competition show. 

As a judge, Dickinson was vicious in her opinions, insulting the contestants to their faces and unapologetically writing them off as ugly or fat. Jay Manuel, who throughout the doc series will defend the show and make excuses for many of its most controversial moments, notes he didn't like Dickinson's brutal approach to critiques and tried to push back with his own. However, he also suggests that her attitude reflected a segment of the modeling industry, and thus had its place on America's Next Top Model.

Did the critiques get too personal? It seemed so for Tiffany Richardson in Cycle 4. She is the contestant whose dressing down from Banks became a meme: "We were rooting for you." And while a substantial part of episode 3, titled "We Were Rooting For You," focuses on this memorable moment, Richardson is not interviewed for Reality Check.

Another surprising absence is Adrianne Curry, the Cycle 1 winner of ANTM, who went on to use that spotlight to become an actress and TV personality. A less noticeable but curious omission, Kenya Barris — who co-created America's Next Top Model and produced it ahead of creating hit sitcoms like Black-ish, Grown-ish, and Mixed-ish — is not interviewed or even mentioned. 

America's Next Top Model's judges offer excuses, not apologies. 

In episode one, Jay Manuel says, "It was such a different time," when speaking to the representation that he and Miss J, as queer people of color, brought to the show. However, this phrase, used to express how America's Next Top Model broke boundaries, is also employed by nearly every ANTM judge to justify how the contestants were treated. 

Reality Check begins by swiftly recounting how Banks, as a Black woman, faced prejudice in her modeling career due to the fashion industry's narrow definition of marketable beauty. With America's Next Top Model, she wanted to open the door for other women to pursue careers in modeling and to show the world the breadth of beauty. However, the very premise of the show set every contestant up to be picked apart for how she looked, from her teeth to her skin to her weight, and on and on. As the face of the show, Banks was frequently seen supporting the very stringent view of beauty she claimed to be breaking down. 

In this first episode of Reality Check, Banks is dismissive of people who criticize the ANTM but "didn't watch it back then" when it first aired. She claims that binge-watching on streaming led to people rediscovering the show, and "overnight," the attitude towards it changed to "look how wrong this is." She ignores that America's Next Top Model sparked discourse as it aired about the outrageous stunts pulled and the brutal pursuit of the picture-perfect shot.

Banks argues it's "important to understand where [ANTM] came from," and so begins the finger-pointing to 2000s culture that was obsessed with skinny women and heroin chic. The early 2000s were a cultural nightmare in that regard, judging every remotely famous woman who dared to have a less-than-flat stomach. But as a show that literally promised to present the next big name in modeling, ANTM bolstered that fixation on weight through their determination of what is beautiful or not.

Banks won't acknowledge that; instead she blames pop culture, the modeling industry, her ANTM colleagues (claiming she had no power whenever a tough choice was made), and the audience that tuned in. "We kept pushing, and we kept creating more, more, more," she said of bizarre photo shoots. "You guys were demanding it. The viewers wanted more and more and more." And with every finger-pointing, Reality Check rebrands Banks as a reality TV villain, just as TikTok has been saying.

What scandals does Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model get into?

Reality Check digs into plenty of America's Next Top Model's most shocking moments. 

ANTM's most disturbing photo shoots

Episode 2 touches on a barrage of gross or problematic photo shoots, including one where the contestants wore meat, another where unhoused people were treated like set dressing, and, of course, the race-swap challenge, where models were painted and dressed to represent an alternate ethnicity.

In this segment of Reality Check, Banks does say, "Yeah, there's some dumb shit," but also defends the race-bending shoot by saying, "This is my way to show the world that brown and Black is beautiful." 

Several models recount how their photoshoot assignments could feel cruel. One particularly horrid example was in Cycle 8, when the models were tasked to be gorgeous homicide victims. Dionne Walters, who was challenged to pose as a woman shot in the head, points out the producers knew her family had a tragic history with gun violence.

"I think they wanted to see some sort of mental breakdown," she tells Reality Check, noting she's proud she didn't give them that. While apologies are few and far between in this mini-series, ANTM director Mok did say of this particular photo shoot, "I take full responsibility for that shoot. It was a mistake. It was crazy. That one I look back and like, 'You're an idiot.'"

ANTM makeovers that demanded cosmetic surgery

More disturbing, however, is how the contestants, many of whom were young and hadn't been away from home before, were put into high-pressure situations that had lasting impacts on their lives. 

Dani Evans and Joanie Sprague from Cycle 6 recount how the show demanded they get cosmetic dental surgery to continue in the competition. The former was pressured by Banks to get the gap between her two front teeth filled. The other went through hours of painful surgery to get rid of her snaggletooth. 

To this, Banks replies, "I've actually apologized for the issue with Dani and what happened. That was between a rock and a hard place for me, because there were agents that would tell me she will not work with those teeth. It's just not going to happen. That's what they told me... But hindsight is 20/20 for all of us. It just so happens that a lot of things that are 20/20 for me happened in front the world." 

Evans responds in her Reality Check interview, "Bull fucking shit."

Sexual harassment on ANTM

Other contestants, including Keenyah Hill from Cycle 4, share how the pressure to keep off weight was intense, leading to girls passing out. Footage from her season shows how Manuel had her pose as "Gluttony" for one photo shoot challenge, then as an elephant in another, with the judges calling her fat in critiques. 

Beyond that, when Hill was sexually harassed by a male model on a photo shoot, she was chastised by the judges for speaking up. In the America's Next Top Model episode, Banks told Evans from the judge's panel she should have said something "in a fun way, where he knows to back the heck up, but it doesn't put static in the air." Essentially, Banks suggested it was on the model being harassed to manage others' comfort about what happened. 

In her interview for Reality Check, Hill gets emotional watching this footage back, pointing out that the male model is groping her legs in the photo that producers chose for judging. 

Looking back on this incident for Reality Check, Banks admits, "It should've been stopped down. We now all understand the protections that women need. And so I say to Keenyah, 'Boo-boo, I am so sorry. None of us knew. Network executives didn't know. And I did the best that I could at that time.' But she deserved more. She did."

"We were rooting for you" wasn't what it seemed.  

We all know the meme. But those of us who watched Tiffany Richardson get screamed at by an uncharacteristically furious Tyra Banks remember how shocking that moment was. Reality Check provides context by presenting footage from America's Next Top Model. Tiffany's arc had been one of a bad girl redeemed. Previously cut from the show because of a physical altercation, she was back and thriving in Cycle 4. Then came the teleprompter challenge. 

The contestants were tasked with reading from a teleprompter without first looking at the copy. Many stumbled on designer names like Hermès, and Tiffany angered the judges by rejecting this challenge, which was clearly designed to make these aspiring models look stupid. When she was told she was no longer in the running to be America's Next Top Model, instead of crying, Richardson laughed as she said goodbye to her fellow contestants. And then Banks went off on her. 

On TV, the dressing down was intense, in large part because it broke from Banks' persona as a gentle, smizing mentor to the contestants. Within the televised rant, Banks said she was yelling but insisted it came from a place of love.

In Reality Check, Banks admits she went "too far." Manuel reveals that Banks said "a lot more" than what was shown and "some of the things that were said were really not well-intentioned." He declines to explain what else was said. But Marin adds, "All I know is next week we had all the lawyers on set."

In an archival interview with E!, Richardson said, "If she loved me, she wouldn't have shown that the way she showed it. If you love someone, you won't humiliate them."

The reality behind Shandi's slut-shaming

Reality Check uncovers the harsh reality that Cycle 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan faced after the show made a spectacle of her "cheating" on her boyfriend. America's Next Top Model presented Shandi's story as a one-night-stand that betrayed her boyfriend back home — and was caught on tape. The morning after, Tyra had an unexpected "girl talk" with the models (while cameras rolled), talking about how bad she felt when she was cheated on. When Shandi called her boyfriend to confess, she wept while he called her a "bitch" on national television

In her interview for Reality Check, Sullivan reveals that she was blackout drunk that night. She notes that while camera crews filmed what happened, no one intervened. She felt the show exploited her to make "good TV," which is a refrain echoed across the model interviews. 

For her part, Banks distances herself from the incident by saying that part of production wasn't her territory. Meanwhile, Mok argues, "We treated Top Model as a documentary,” to explain why no one intervened. However, Sullivan notes the show's makers only gave her a phone to call her boyfriend after she threatened to quit the show. And then, they only gave the phone to her if she'd take the call with cameras rolling. She also reveals that after the show, strangers would slut-shame her on the street in front of her boyfriend.

Calling America's Next Top Model a documentary is intellectually dishonest, as it implies the producers weren't intervening at other times. But they were. His argument that the girls signed on knowing they'd be filmed at all times is infuriatingly insufficient. If these girls were in a fishbowl, even if they agreed to that, they had no say on if someone shakes the fishbowl to see their reaction. They were all pretty meat to the America's Next Top Model grinder.

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is now streaming on Netflix.