America’s Next Top Model is in the news thanks to Netflix documentary Reality Check, prompting the re-emergence of shocking allegations made by Season 1 winner Adrianne Curry.
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is a new Netflix documentary that delves behind-the-scenes of the TV phenomenon.
Launched by supermodel producer and host Tyra Banks on UPN in 2003, the show was a reality contest that whittled contestants down until a model winner was crowned.
But the new documentary has shined a light on fat-shaming and body-shaming that occurred on ANTM, as well as a “race-swap” controversy, and an alleged sexual assault. While one contestant is now claiming she never received what she was owed.
Adrianne Curry claims she didn’t receive America’s Next Top Model prize in full
Episode 1 of Reality Check focuses on Season 1 – aka Cycle 1 – of America’s Next Top Model, at the end of which Adrianne Curry was declared the winner.
At the starts of that season, Tyra Banks tells the contestants that they are competing for “a contract with Revlon, a fashion spread in Marie Claire magazine, and representation by top modeling agency Wilhelmina.”
But according to Curry, those promises were not kept. “What I won was to go to Revlon corporate, sit in a back room, have a makeup artist put makeup on my face for a team of about seven people watching me,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2023. “Who the f*ck would fight as hard as we fought for that?”
Curry said the gig paid just $15,000, and left her feeling “f*cking humiliated.”
The Season 1 winner also believes that the decision to swap the Wilhelmina agency for IMG Models in Season 2 destroyed her chance at a career.
“[The agents] wanted me to fail,” Curry claimed. “They straight-up told me. They were pissed off because Top Model made them a bunch of promises they didn’t keep.”
Curry believes that bitterness resulted in Wilhelmina holding her back from castings, in an effort to make Banks and America’s Next Top Model look bad, which in turn prompted Curry to try and break her contract with the agency.
EW reached out to Wilhelmina at the time for comment, and former VP Ray Lata responded by saying: “20 years ago, Wilhelmina had different owners and staff. Wilhelmina is now a public company. It seems unlikely there would be sufficient motivation to harm Tyra and not try to maximize a model’s earning potential.”
America’s Next Top Model is set to return for Season/Cycle 25 sometime in the near future, while Adrianne Curry now works for Avon as a global representative.
Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile Servers Will Be Turned Off in April, Activision Confirms