By Michele Yeo
It was back in the year nineteen hundred and ninety nine when the prophets known as Smash Mouth wisely observed “the years start coming and they don’t stop coming.” Well, when it comes to the year 2026 and America’s Next Top Model, it appears the hit pieces have started coming and they don’t stop coming. First, Reality Check: Inside American’s Next Top Model dropped on Netflix and immediately went viral for shining a light on all the problematic elements of the modelling competition show and now ANTM is under the spotlight again, this time in a two episode installment of a series called Dirty Rotten Scandals, looking back at toxic TV.
Both Reality Check and Dirty Rotten Scandals feature interviews with former contestants (including some crossovers) but where Reality Check heard from ANTM power players like executive producer Ken Mok, judges Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, and Jay Alexander along with Tyra Banks herself, Dirty Rotten Scandals features only one former judge or cast member: Janice Dickinson. Dickinson may only have sat at the judges table for four of the show’s 24 seasons (or “cycles”) but her impact on the show is undeniable. Also, undeniable? Her palpable disdain for Tyra Banks. “Truth of the matter, she was a hardcore bitch,” is one of the first things Dickinson says about her former boss.
To say ANTM has aged poorly is putting it mildly. Both Reality Check and Dirty Rotten Scandals hammer that home with horror stories from previous contestants who liken their experience to “psychological warfare.” Cycles five and 17 contestant Lisa D’Amato tells the doc she felt her childhood abuse trauma was used against her while cycle 14 and subsequent all-star winner Angelea Preston tells the doc she believes the producers knew about her sex work before crowning her the winner and then stripping it away from her. D’Amato was then declared the winner of that season and she tells Dirty Rotten Scandals she too believes Preston was set up.
Dickinson also weighs in on the treatment of the contestants, telling the doc, “America’s Next Top Model really tortured these girls for Tyra Banks’ ego,” adding, “she put the girls down for everything, the hairstyles, the way they walk, the way they hold their face, it really tore their ego and their identity. I was there and I saw it for four seasons.” That may all be true, but what’s also true is Janice Dickinson was right there with Tyra Banks, calling models fat, making fun of their teeth, and generally going below and beyond what would constitute constructive criticism. Did it make for great television? Sure, at the time yes, it did. But to not acknowledge that Dickinson wasn’t complicit is nothing short of revisionist history. Dickinson tells the doc the contestants “left the show completely depressed and depleted” while taking no accountability for said depression and depletion. Instead, she veers into “just doing my job” territory, blaming her acid tongue on the show. “The producers on America’s Next Top Model, especially Tyra, were begging me to be harsher and cruel like Simon Cowell was on American Idol,” she says.
ANTM is just the latest show from the early 2000s to be put under the microscope. The masochistic weight loss competition show, The Biggest Loser also got the Netflix doc treatment last year with Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser and Hulu has announced plans for a documentary diving into the absolute fever dream that was the 2004 show, The Swan. But so far, while these documentaries have certainly showcased how problematic these shows were when viewed through a modern day lens, what they’ve been lacking in is accountability. Everyone involved has stopped short of taking ownership of their roles in what made these shows so toxic, blaming instead either the culture of the early 2000s, the show’s producers, the ratings that toxicity generated, or a combination of all of the above. After Reality Check went viral turning Tyra Banks into America’s current top villain, Jay Manuel, Jay Alexander, and Nigel Barker made the press rounds, appearing on a series of talk shows further shifting all the blame on to Banks and now, Janice Dickinson is also piling on. Yes, Tyra Banks is 100 per cent responsible for how problematic America’s Next Top Model was but let’s not pretend everyone else’s hands are clean.
Dirty Rotten Scandals: America’s Next Top Model is now streaming on Crave.
