Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model has landed on Netflix, taking a look back at the long-running competition show’s controversial past, including an incident involving former contestant Shandi Sullivan.
Like many pop culture moments of the ‘00s, America’s Next Top Model has been looked back on with a collective side eye, and the new documentary series wastes no time in delving into the show’s most uncomfortable moments.
The opening scene alone is host Tyra Banks’ infamous Cycle 4 meltdown, when she screamed “we were all rooting for you” at contestant Tiffany Richardson. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, placing everything from fat- and body-shaming to “race swap” photoshoots under the microscope.
Then there’s the incident involving Cycle 2 star Shandi Sullivan, who appears in Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model to give her side of the story. Warning: some may find this content distressing.
Where is Shandi Sullivan now?
Shandi Sullivan has rebuilt her life following her time on America’s Next Top Model, now co-hosting the horror movie podcast Urn Fulla Popcorn alongside The Whitest Kids U’Know star Timmy Williams.
Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Shandi was famously a Walgreens clerk when she entered the competition show in 2003. She now appears to be living in Brooklyn, New York, where she also works for Brooklyn Cat Sitting.
In 2023, Shandi also announced her small business Dream Meow Corner, a shop run out of her Brooklyn home. “I make all kinds of cute things! Pet portraits, earrings, blobs, candle holders… whatever I am interested in at the moment,’ she wrote at the time.
“Love creating and learning. If you are looking for any gifts for someone or for yourself, take a gander!”
As well as presenting the podcast on the usual streaming channels, Urn Fulla Popcorn has a Patreon and a merch line.
The latest episode focuses on the 1990 classic Misery, with the description stating, “RIP Rob Reiner! Shandi and Timmy talk about Misery in his honor, and it gets pretty interesting/personal/horny (duh).”
Last month, Shandi shared the Netflix documentary trailer on her Instagram, which features clips from interviews of those involved in the making of the show, including Miss J Alexander, Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, and Tyra Banks.
“This is going to be an interesting watch. I saw the trailer the same time everyone else did and have no clue what anyone said in their interviews,” Shandi wrote.
“The beginning of this trailer really irks my tator as you might imagine. Almost to the point that I struggled with even wanting to share it. We shall see if this is just an edit to make them look bad or they finally take responsibility for the part they played.
“Because if you truly are placing the blame on the fans for continuing to abuse, manipulate, and extort the contestants on the show that bares your name; I don’t think they ever will and that’s a damn shame.”
Shandi revisits the Milan incident in Netflix documentary
Shandi’s storyline in the reality series took a turn when it was framed that she had cheated on her boyfriend Eric Linn while in Italy. But as she says in the Netflix documentary, the incident was an alleged sexual assault.
Shandi first explains where she was at in her life when she joined America’s Next Top Model, describing how she didn’t feel pretty before the series and came from a difficult background.
At age 21, her story and transformation inspired thousands who felt the same way, and her confidence grew over time. But in the present day, when asked by the documentary producers if she wanted to stay in the running to win, Shandi replies, “I did until what happened in Milan. And then I didn’t care.”
In Cycle 2, the contestants were flown to Milan for a series of “go-sees” – in-person model castings. They were transported by a group of young Italian men on Vespas, and after working all day, someone suggested the guys come over to their home for a party.
Shandi thought nothing of it at the time, saying, “I was just excited to have a night. We were just talking, drinking.” But she hadn’t eaten anything that day or had much sleep.
“I remember getting in the hot tub,” she continues. “I remember April and Mercedes getting in the hot tub. And then I just remember the guy looking at me, and I looked at him, and I was pretty drunk at that point.
“Everything after that is just a blur. All I remember is just… I remember him on top of me. I was blacked out.” Shandi says she was “hammered”, having drunk around two bottles of wine by herself on an empty stomach.
“I just remember little bits and pieces… I didn’t even remember sex happening. I just knew it was happening. And then I passed out,” she says.
Anyone who watched the show at the time will remember that scenes of this moment were played on TV, and it became a central storyline of Cycle 2. Shandi says that not only did the producers not step in to help, but they continued filming the entire incident.
“No one did anything to stop it. And it all got filmed, all of it. Every moment of it,” she says.
In Episode 2 of the new docu-series, Shandi recalls waking up and feeling instant guilt towards her then-boyfriend Eric. Again, this entire moment was filmed and aired, showing her crying on her bed the next morning and telling the other contestants, “I want to die.”
When asked if she thinks production should have stopped it, she says, “I think after getting out of the hot tub and whatever happened after that, I think they should have f**king been like, ‘Alright, this has gone too far. We got to pull her out of this.’”
Creative director Jay Manuel also states in the doc, “I don’t know whose decision it was, but as producers do, this was a story point now, and we’re gonna see it all the way through.”
At the time, Shandi was labelled a cheater, with Tyra then meeting with the girls and talking about being cheated on. She calls Shandi out, saying “we have to fight against our carnal desires” and preaches about “honesty.”
Journalist Zakiya Gibbons says in the doc, Tyra “comes in and stokes the fire under the guise of concerned big sis or mentor.”
Shandi demanded a phone so she could call Eric but they shut her down. However, when she said she was ready to leave the show and go home, they fulfilled her request.
But the producers again filmed Shandi’s devastating phone conversation with Eric, all of which made it to air. “Afterwards, I’m just laying on the floor in a fetal position, just crying, and they just get up to leave,” she says.
“They both came up to me and they said, ‘We’re really, really sorry that we had to film that.’”
What’s more, production filmed a conversation Shandi had with the Italian man, where she had to ask him if he wore protection or had any STDs.
After filming America’s Next Top Model, Shandi says she went back to working at Walgreens and “felt really broken.” She and Eric tried to make things work but they couldn’t, in part due to the negative attention she gained from her time on the show. “It made me hate myself,” she says.
Years later, Shandi was invited to appear on The Tyra Banks Show, but she specified that she didn’t want to watch the clips of what happened in Italy. “It just brought up too many things,” she explains.
“And then she just puts it on the screen in front of me… That was miserable. That behavior doesn’t stop. Her behavior doesn’t change.”
Tyra Banks faces backlash over response
Tyra Banks is now facing backlash for her response to the incident in Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, with some viewers accusing her of trying to absolve herself from responsibility.
In Episode 1 of Reality Check, Banks is asked if she remembers Shandi, to which she replies, “I do remember her story. It’s a little difficult for me to talk about production because that’s not my territory.”
Executive producer Ken Mok then says, “We treated Top Model as a documentary and we told the girls that.
“On day one, when they’d show up, we’d go over the rules with them: ‘There’s going to be cameras on you 24/7, day in and day out, and they’re going to cover everything, the good, the bad and everything in between.’”
Banks then adds, “I’m not head of story, that’s Ken Mok. But I did become a master editor. It’s important for people to know that we didn’t put everything on TV.”
In response to the entire incident involving Shandi, one viewer wrote on Reddit, “In the new docuseries on Netflix Shandi tells her story being SA’d and how production filmed the entire thing and then manipulated it to look like she cheated on her boyfriend.
“And then when they wouldn’t let her go home they filmed her telling him that she cheated on him. I’m so shocked by the entire situation and feel so badly for her. Obviously reality TV isn’t ACTUALLY portraying reality but this is another level of messed up.
“Turning a girl who was not only SA’d, but the entire production team watched it happen, didn’t stop it, and FILMED it, and then spun it to make her the bad guy and that she was a cheater. And watching Tyra defend it by saying ‘that wasn’t my area’ like wowwww.
“Thinking about how many people this had to go through and it still passed to network.”
“‘That’s not my area’ – Tyra Banks, Creator, Producer,” said another, while a third added, “How quickly she threw Ken Mok under the bus.”
A fourth commented, “After she had JUST bragged about how involved she was in the edit. It might not have been her decision to keep the cameras rolling on an active SA, but she was more than happy to include it as a story point in the season that went to air.”
Banks’ statements in the docu-series are similar to those her spokesperson said years prior when Shandi came out with what really happened to her on air.
Regarding the clips played on The Tyra Banks Show, her spokesperson told Entertainment Weekly in 2023, “Ms. Banks was not personally approached about this request and would never deliberately air a moment if someone specifically asked her not to. This goes against her beliefs.”
Where is Eric Linn now?
Thankfully, Shandi has been able to move on and forge a career out of her passions, and it looks like her ex Eric Linn has done the same.
According to his latest social media posts, he appears to have started a family with his current partner, although it’s important to note that Eric himself hasn’t spoken publicly about the events revisited in the Netflix documentary or his life since America’s Next Top Model.
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