At its heart, “America’s Next Top Model” was Tyra Banks’ show. She originated the canonical reality series’ concept, assembled its core cast and anchored its production for 23 cycles, which first aired on UPN before it became the CW.

But “Reality Check,” a new Netflix docuseries now streaming that examines “ANTM” and its checkered history through the accounts of those who were a part of it, is not affiliated with Banks. In fact, the supermodel turned media personality wasn’t invited to take the hot seat until well after production on the docuseries began, said Daniel Sivan, who co-directed “Reality Check” with his wife, Mor Loushy.

“It was like, ‘Hey, this can be a great addition, but definitely not a necessity,’” Sivan said. Luckily for the directors, Banks eventually agreed to an interview, which Loushy said clocked in at about four hours and wound up giving the series a richer texture.

“People talking trash about her is very easy to find,” Sivan said. “But having her passion, bringing this program to life, is something that only she could tell.”

For Sivan and Loushy, whose filmography leans sociopolitical, the pop-culture-centric “Reality Check” seems a departure. But Loushy said that she stewarded this project with the same care that she did the duo’s acclaimed 2025 docuseries “ American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden.”

“I felt the journey is more or less the same because there were difficult issues. There were things that were sensitive and important for me,” Loushy said, from the harassment “ANTM” contestants endured to the insecurities that “to us as women, are sitting tight and hard every day on our heart.”

For Sivan, the allure of “ANTM” as a documentary subject lay in the tragic arc of Banks and her fellow crew members, whom the director said set out with positive intentions to empower women and promote representation for other marginalized people in the fashion industry. Then, he said, as the show evolved, “these misfits became bullies.”

“At the end of the day, was it a force of good, or was it a force of evil? I hope people keep debating that,” Sivan said.

“Really, the doc doesn’t end with the credits,” he added. “It ends with the conversations it will spark.”

Here are seven takeaways from “Reality Check” that are sure to drive those conversations.

Shandi Sullivan implies she was sexually assaulted

The penultimate episode of “ANTM” Cycle 2 dedicates much of its runtime to a plotline that is framed as contestant Shandi Sullivan cheating on her boyfriend Eric with a male model during a visit to Milan.

The way Sullivan explains it in the first and second episode of “Reality Check,” the then-21-year-old was under the influence of alcohol. The night began with drinks and led to a group hot tub dip, where she and the male model started getting physical. Later, footage shows the two in the shower and in bed, but Sullivan says that she had “blacked out,” the cameras kept rolling and “no one did anything to stop it.”

“After getting out of the hot tub and whatever happened after that,” Sullivan says, “I think they should’ve ... been like, ‘All right, this has gone too far. Like, we got to, we got to pull her out of this.’”

The show’s executive producer Ken Mok says their job was to capture, not to intervene: “We treated ‘Top Model’ as a documentary, and we told the girls that.”

Similarly, when Cycle 4 contestant Keenyah Hill informed the judges that a male model had groped her repeatedly during a photo shoot, Banks encouraged her to learn to stick up for herself.

Eating disorders were rampant on set and contestants were pressured into cosmetic work

Hill was also repeatedly shamed about her weight and physical appearance, with former supermodel Janice Dickinson instructing her to better hide her stomach during photo shoots. Dickinson was known to share strong opinions that veered negative and even mean-spirited on the judging panel.

Like Hill, many other girls were criticized for their weight and advised to restrict their eating to better approximate a model’s physique; thus, eating disorders were common among contestants, says Bre Scullark, who appeared in Cycle 5, in the documentary. After a fainting spell, model Heather Kuzmich was told by a medic that she had to eat the next day. “I think I just pushed myself way past my limit,” she said in a confessional.

Producers also pressured Cycle 6 contestants Joanie Dodds and Dani Evans into undergoing invasive dental procedures that focused on cosmetic rather than health improvements. Evans strongly protested removing her signature tooth gap but gave in when Banks essentially gave her an ultimatum: Get rid of the gap or go home.

“The girls were awarded and applauded for putting their health on the backburner,” journalist Zakiya Gibbons says in the documentary.

In kind, the docuseries shows Mok during an appearance on “The Inner View” saying “the biggest disaster ever is always the best thing. People have 104-degree temperature. They’re throwing up. They need IVs. That’s the best news I could ever have.”

Producers mined models’ files to create drama

When Cycle 8 contestant Dionne Walters was a child, her mother was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. Nonetheless, during her season’s crime-themed photo shoot — one of the series’ most controversial shoots, alongside the “race-swap” photo shoots during Cycles 4 and 13 — Walters was memorably portrayed as a shooting victim, sporting a bullet wound in her head.

“I thought it was a coincidence at the time, but I don’t think it was,” Walters says in the documentary, adding that her mother’s accident was in her application. The model was critiqued by the judging panel for not exhibiting much emotion in her photos.

“I’m just glad they didn’t get the reaction that I feel like they were hoping to get,” she says.

Mok in the documentary concedes, “I take full responsibility for that shoot. That was a mistake… That one, I look back and I’m like, ‘You were an idiot.’”

Banks’ rant at Tiffany Richardson became a meme, but it was not funny

In the years since it aired, Banks’ infamous tirade, “I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you!”, directed at model Tiffany Richardson, has been parodied by countless users online and even on“Ru Paul’s Drag Race.” But the day it happened, former “ANTM” judge and fashion photographer Nigel Barker said no one was laughing.

“Tyra really scared all of us. We literally jumped out of our seats,” Barker said. After shooting the scene, production staff escorted Banks off set, “ANTM” alum Jay Manuel added. Banks admits she “went too far. You know, I lost it.”

According to Manuel, not everything Banks said that day was televised and Nolé Marin, a stylist and judge on the show, says lawyers were brought to set after that.

Banks and ‘The Jays’ didn’t end on good terms

Over time, Manuel said he began to feel uncomfortable with Banks’ insistence that “ANTM” needed to constantly reinvent, even at the expense of their original mission to uplift young models.

When the media personality finally worked up the courage to quit, he said Banks gave him the cold shoulder. Even though he ended up staying on another 10 cycles, the pair’s relationship never recovered. In the documentary, Banks declined to speak about Manuel, insisting instead that she should call him on her own. (To Sivan and Loushy’s knowledge, she still hasn’t.)

Years after Manuel tried to leave “ANTM,” he was cut along with Barker and J. Alexander, after the head of the CW network told Banks and Mok they needed to make a change. While the three men still keep in touch, Banks is no longer in their orbit. And after J. Alexander, who also goes by Miss J, suffered a life-altering stroke, she never paid him a hospital visit.

Winners rarely found success in the industry after the show

Banks promised models a jump-start into the fashion industry. Yet even “ANTM” winners rarely managed to sustain modeling careers after exiting the show.

Evans, the contestant who was coerced into closing her tooth gap, said a fellow model once relayed to her a conversation with her agent, where she was told, “We have to treat Dani differently because she came from ‘Top Model.’” Later, Evans learned Banks for years stood idly by as the young model was passed over for opportunities.

“I always rode the fence with you,” Evans recalled Banks confessing to her, adding, “They built a whole empire, a multi-million dollar brand, known as ‘America’s Next Top Model’ off the backs of every girl‘s dream that did that show.”

Banks says she is not done yet with ‘ANTM’

Despite everything, from the years of backlash to the personal confrontations she’s had with former contestants, Banks in the documentary still had her mind on rebooting “ANTM.”

“I feel like my work is not done,” Banks said. “You have no idea what we have planned for Cycle 25.”

No new seasons of the show have been announced as of the documentary’s release.

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