Back in 2005, I became the promotions director for a WB affiliate station in Ohio. Within months, the WB folded, along with fellow netlet UPN, and out of the ashes of the two was born The CW. The fledgling network launched a few new shows, but for the most part relied on established shows from both networks, and one of those shows was America’s Next Top Model.

The CW encouraged their affiliates to host their own casting calls for the show’s upcoming cycle (seasons), selecting the best of the local entrants to be jumped ahead in line for consideration for a slot on the show. I distinctly remember two such winners from my station’s calls, and how much I hoped that one of them would be called to appear on the program for a chance to become America’s Next Top Model. Alas, none of my winners made the cut.

I’m awfully happy about that now that I’ve watched Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model on Netflix. I would hate to be even indirectly responsible for sending anyone there given what went on behind the scenes.

For one, the program’s title is somewhat misleading, as its main focus, Tyra Banks, seems to be unable to pick up said reality check.

ANTM premiered on UPN in May of 2003. The first cycle, or season, featured 10 contestants who were made over, subjected to a weekly themed photo shoot, and schooled in walking the runway and negotiating the business of fashion modeling. One contestant was eliminated every week by the panel of judges until the final week, when the two remaining contestants competed for the Top Model designation.

The show was a massive hit for the viewership-challenged UPN, and the show was renewed. Subsequent cycles repeated this process with a new batch of model wannabes. The show moved to the CW in 2006 where it aired through 2015. After that it went for two more years on VH1, for a total of 24 cycles, all but one hosted by Banks.

The documentary is not concerned with the show’s overall history, though we do look at the way ANTM had a resurgence in popularity when Covid had us all binging reality programming back in 2020. The Reality Check producers use this fact to introduce the idea that a new, younger viewership did not see the show through the same lens its audience did when it first aired.

People watching in 2020 and beyond are shown via their TikTok posts to be scandalized by some of the show challenges and treatment of the models, some as young as 18, received on the show. And then the documentary producers bring in some of those models to give their side of the story.

Which is good, because you won’t get much in the way of mea culpas out of creator/producer/host Tyra Banks, who sits down for her interview wearing a belted trenchcoat number, looking as though she doesn’t plan to hang around for too long. Banks acknowledges that yes, some regrettable decisions were made over the show’s run but seems unwilling to take accountability for any of them, falling back on excuses instead.

Former ANTM hosts Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker and Miss J. Alexander are also interviewed about their time on the show, but they seem to have no problem laying the blame where they think it belongs – and mostly that is on Tyra, in her role as a producer. There’s no love lost between the three of them and Banks, not after she unceremoniously fired all three of them. (Banks claims that the network made her do it but makes no excuses for the tactless way it was handled.) Alexander reveals towards the documentary’s end that she suffered a stroke several years ago, but Banks has never visited her.

Former contestant (and Cycle 10 winner) Whitney Thompson and Cycle 4 contestant Keenyah Hill are brought in to showcase the fat-shaming that Banks and other judges resorted to, despite Banks’ stated commitment to challenging the unrealistic weight requirements for modeling. Banks blames the industry, which was apparently immovable in its insistence on using size 0 models, but she apparently had no real plan to meaningfully counter this despite going out of her way to hire “plus-size” models. (Both young women seemed to me to look healthy and thin.)

Hill is also allowed to speak about how a male model touched her inappropriately during a shoot in full view of everyone, and when she spoke out to the photographer and Manuel, she was chastised for unprofessionalism. And Cycle 2 model Shandi Sullivan was blackout drunk at a party the remaining models were holding when a male guest, from how Sullivan describes it, had sex with her while she was in and out of consciousness.

The entire incident was filmed by the production staff, which did nothing to stop it. Banks’ response at the time was to lecture Sullivan about fidelity, after she had already called home to disclose the incident to her then-boyfriend. Every excruciating word of that conversation was broadcast in the episode titled “The Girl Who Cheated.” Modern-day viewers call out the use of the word “cheated” when a case can (and should) be made that Sullivan was raped on camera.

Asked about the incident, Banks again weasels out of responsibility. “I do remember her story. It’s a little difficult for me to talk about production because that’s not my territory.” Banks was the program’s Executive Producer.

Co-producer Ken Mok then appears on the doc to tell us that the story unfolding before them was too good to hold back of any concern for Sullivan or her boyfriend. And we hear a few more times how the show’s remit was manufacturing drama for the audience, not launching the careers of future supermodels.

Cycle 6 winner Dani Evans and fellow contestant Joanie Sprague are required to go through dental surgery, Evans under threat of being kicked off the show if she failed to comply. Sprague was interested in having dental work done, but the experience was longer and more painful than she expected, and the long-term results were not uniformly positive. Evans is particularly bitter about having to involuntarily change her looks because even though she won, no doors were opened for her because of that. On the contrary, she tells us, ANTM winners seemed to be blacklisted from serious modeling gigs.

Reality Check offers many more such salacious and unsavory behind-the-scenes dirt on ANTM, such as controversial shoots and challenges like the time that the contestants were made up to appear as though they were another race. And even though the producers got real-time backlash against after the segment aired, the distasteful idea is used again a few cycles later. And while competing on the show, many of the models had health scares both physical and mental.

Before she stands up to go, Banks says that Cycle 25 of ANTM is coming. But she never says that she will do anything different the next time she presides over a group of hungry young models.

All three hours of Reality Check are available to stream now on Netflix.