Featured image: Screenshot from Netflix via YouTube.
GLOBAL RELEASE — “I haven’t really said much. But now, it’s time.”
In a fresh drop, streaming powerhouse, Netflix, released a first look into the upcoming America’s Next Top Model documentary detailing the inner workings of the reality show that built supermodel Tyra Bank‘s empire, long after she took a pause from her reign as one of the most recognizable and bankable fashion models of her time.
In the trailer for Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, Banks sits down for the first time to discuss what went down in its meteoric rise to pop culture consciousness and what went wrong on the reality search that bred a slew of names not just in fashion, but in many facets of entertainment in its 24 seasons, the last of which aired in 2018 after close to 15 years.
With the host and show creator in the series are featured interviews of fellow executive producer Ken Mok, former judges Jay Manuel, Jay Alexander, and Nigel Barker, along with former contestants and winners including Dani Evans, Whitney Thompson, Shannon Stewart, Shandi Sullivan, and Keenyah Hill, among others.
(L-R) Fashion photographer Nigel Barker, creator and host Tyra Banks, runway coach and judge Jay Alexander, and make-up artist turned judge Jay Manuel. Image courtesy of Netflix.
In the early aughts, deemed globally as the golden age of reality TV, America’s Next Top Model or ANTM, to many of its fans, became almost untouchable. Created by Banks and developed by Mok and Kenya Barris, the reality competition trailed the lives of its hopefuls, giving an intriguing and deeply engrossing behind-the-scenes look into what was once a cordoned off world of the fashion industry.
In every season, or cycle of the show, aspirants from across the United States, some hailing from different countries, were hand-picked, collected, and asked to live together to vie for challenges, with each episode ending with a weekly elimination. Each cycle winner gets awarded the coveted “America’s Next Top Model” title that came with a fashion magazine spread and contracts with fashion brands and management from a modeling agency.
Lifting the velvet rope on the ins and outs of modeling—be it for booking gigs in runway shows, posing in couture editorials, and commercials for consumer brands—the series gave an in not just on its army of oft-inexperienced but determined contestants, but on its viewers around the globe, that, at its peak, recorded a viewership of over 100 million. It expanded even further with a string of Top Model iterations mushrooming across countries around the world, including the Philippines.
With all these said, ANTM was arguably a culture-shaping show that single-handedly gave birth to many pop culture lexicon that still persists to this day. If anything, “fierce” and even “smize,” deeply rooted in the judging panel sessions and photo shoot challenges of the show—the latter claimed to be coined by Banks, herself—that trickled down to become an everyday terminology long before selfies and Internet virality were a thing.
But its global dominance and unmistakable cultural imprint didn’t come without a price.
Cast of the now-defunct reality show America’s Next Top Model. Image courtesy of Netflix.
After over two decades since its first cycle in 2003, and close to seven years after it last aired, came a deluge of controversies and comments on unmissable “cancellable” show directions, in great parts fueled by what can only be described as a pandemic-induced binge-watching, to the dismay and disapproving glare of the Internet—damaging declarations that the show did not age well. This consensus was aided by claims that the show and its key players got away with problematic behavior scot-free, and its blame directed mostly to Banks as creator, host, and face of the global brand.
It also didn’t help that many first-hand accounts of some of its show participants corroborated these many “irregularities.” Think a time when both passive aggressive and overt body-shaming, before body-shaming was even a term, and mandatory drastic cosmetic transformations—some even requiring minor invasive surgeries—were commonplace, politically incorrect creative choices and practices were pushed under the guise of existing industry standard, and outlandish challenges that were borderline abusive and downright manipulative, all thrown the contestants’ way in the name for a place in the industry.
Series poster courtesy of Netflix.
“I realized, Tyra would do anything for the success of her show,” make-up artist, turned creative director and judging panel member, Jay Manuel said in the trailer.
“I knew I went too far,” Banks declared. “It was very, very intense. But you guys demanded it and so we kept pushing more.”
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is a three-part series directed by Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan (American Manhunt: Osama Bin Laden), that charts the show’s highs and the lows with reflections from the integral cogs that made it into an unrelenting beast during its time. The series premieres on Netflix on February 16.
Watch the trailer below:
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