Even though Joanie later admitted that the surgery did her lifelong damage, there was only ever one answer to Tyra\u2019s request. After all, this was America\u2019s Next Top Model \u2013at its peak, one of the most watched shows on television and a stalwart of mid-2000s pop culture.<\/p>\n
The premise was simple. After a rigorous casting drive, around a dozen aspiring models were selected to appear on the show and moved into a shared New York apartment.<\/p>\n
There, they had weekly photoshoots, \u2018catwalk challenges\u2019 and makeovers, all under the watchful eye of Tyra and her rotating panel of judges, which included photographer Nigel Barker, then Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, runway coach Miss J. Alexander, as well as veteran supermodels Janice Dickinson<\/a> and Twiggy<\/a>.<\/p>\n One by one, contestants were eliminated until a winner was crowned and handed a contract, a magazine cover appearance and the promise of a high-fashion modelling career.<\/p>\n It drew audiences of up to 100 million worldwide, spawned more than 30 international spin-offs from Africa to Brazil and ran for 24 seasons between 2003 and 2018.<\/p>\n Tyra Banks claims she created Top Model as a vehicle \u2018to fight against the fashion industry\u2019<\/p>\n The show produced countless online memes and even developed its own lexicon: fans learnt what it meant to \u2018smize\u2019 (smiling with your eyes) to \u2018booty tooch\u2019 (pushing out your posterior to enhance angles in photos) and to feel \u2018flawsome\u2019 (confident in your flaws).\u00a0<\/p>\n Viewers watched 324 contestants pass through the Top Model machine \u2013 not including the tens of thousands more who auditioned to get on the show.<\/p>\n In hindsight, perhaps they were the lucky ones. The reputation of Top Model has shifted dramatically from camp, fabulous fun to something far more troubling.<\/p>\n Clips of Banks and her fellow judges berating contestants (\u2018You look deranged… and you look like you have a penis\u2019) and criticising their weight (\u2018She\u2019s fat. She\u2019s huge! She looks like she should be working for a car-toppling company!\u2019) now circulate widely on social media, prompting a collective sense of disbelief that this ever passed for entertainment.<\/p>\n And now, a three-part Netflix documentary, Reality Check: Inside America\u2019s Next Top Model \u2013 released on Monday \u2013 has lifted the lid on the show\u2019s scandalous legacy. It\u2019s the first time that Tyra has spoken at length on the controversy. She claims she created Top Model as a vehicle \u2018to fight against the fashion industry\u2019.<\/p>\n As a former supermodel who \u2018was constantly being told\u2019, she says, \u2018you can\u2019t do this because you\u2019re black\u2019, this was her form of \u2018payback\u2019 to the agencies and fashion houses who had overlooked her.<\/p>\n However, the Daily Mail this week spoke exclusively to two Top Model winners who claim that their experiences were far worse than is revealed in the new documentary \u2013 which, they say, is merely a glossy and desperate attempt at damage control.<\/p>\n Both refused to take be interviewed for the sanitised Netflix series, claiming that the involvement of both Banks and Top Model executive producer Ken Mok suggests they had a \u2018heavy hand\u2019 in the production process.<\/p>\n Snaggle-toothed Joanie Dodds just before sitting in the dentist\u2019s chair to get her smile fixed so she could stay in the competition<\/p>\n How Joanie looked after dental surgery that left her with lifelong damage<\/p>\n Today, they sensationally reveal how they were lied to, manipulated and \u2018psychologically tortured\u2019 during and after the production process, comparing Banks to the \u2018great white shark\u2019 of the fashion industry. One even claims she was forced to confront her childhood sexual abuse on air. But more on that later.<\/p>\n What the series does offer is a quickfire run-through of the show\u2019s worst controversies.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most sobering incident it recounts is that of Shandi Sullivan – a 21-year-old supermarket checkout girl from Missouri who featured in series two in 2004.<\/p>\n Midway through the series, producers told the contestants that they were allowed to spend a rare evening socialising with a group of male models. Shandi, who had a boyfriend, Eric, at home, got talking to one of them. \u2018We were just like talking and drinking,\u2019 Shandi recalls in the documentary. \u2018I don\u2019t think I\u2019d eaten anything at all . . . I remember getting in the hot tub… I was pretty drunk at that point.<\/p>\n \u2018Everything after that is a blur. I just remember, like, him on top of me.\u2019 The pair had sex in a shower.<\/p>\n Despite Shandi\u2019s obvious inebriation, camera crews filmed the entire sordid ordeal instead of intervening. Footage from the following morning shows Shandi sobbing into a pillow wailing: \u2018I wanna die.\u2019<\/p>\n Producers then refused to allow Shandi to call her boyfriend to tell him what had happened, until she threatened to quit the series.<\/p>\n When they did give her permission, it was on the condition that the cameras had to capture their conversation. The result was a deeply disturbing exchange in which Eric, wailing down the phone, calls Shandi \u2013 whose skeletal frame is curled up on the floor, sobbing \u2013 a \u2018stupid b***h\u2019.<\/p>\n When asked about the incident on the documentary, Banks coldly replies: \u2018It\u2019s a little difficult for me to talk about production because it\u2019s not my territory.\u2019<\/p>\n America’s Next Top Model judges, from left, former Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, Tyra Banks, photographer Nigel Barker and designer Patricia Field<\/p>\n Ken Mok is similarly unrepentant. \u2018We treated Top Model as a documentary\u2019, he says, \u2018and we told the girls that.\u2019<\/p>\n After series two aired, the show went stratospheric. But it soon became clear that this was primarily a reality TV series. It wasn\u2019t going to be regularly parachuting winners to runways in Paris or the covers of Vogue.<\/p>\n The main thing was to keep viewers hooked. By the time it reached its middle seasons, America\u2019s Next Top Model had developed a taste for what it called \u2018high-concept\u2019 shoots \u2013 which were less like fashion editorials and more like dares designed to psychologically rattle contestants.<\/p>\n The concepts became ever more absurd: a photoshoot posing with live tarantulas on contestants\u2019 faces; another in which the girls were asked to pose in couture gowns with real homeless people surrounding them; one featured a model posing on a loo in a \u2018bulimic- themed\u2019 look; and another, having just heard that a friend had died, was forced to pose in a coffin.<\/p>\n Then there was a race-swapping editorial in which one black model was smothered in white make-up to look Korean. A white woman was painted to appear as an African woman.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unthinkable that any such segment would be broadcast today. Even at the time, the show\u2019s creative director, Jay Manuel \u2013 who grew up in apartheid-era South Africa \u2013 was uneasy \u2013 and reveals that he asked to be excused from the shoot.<\/p>\n Banks refused, claiming she didn\u2019t think it was controversial: \u2018This was my way of showing that brown and black was beautiful!\u2019<\/p>\n In hindsight, however, Banks claims: \u2018Looking back now, it\u2019s an issue. And I 100 per cent understand why.\u2019<\/p>\n But even the race-swapping shoot pales in comparison to the murder-themed editorial of series eight.<\/p>\n Lisa D\u2019Amato first appeared on America\u2019s Next Top Model in 2005, before returning to win the show\u2019s All-Stars season in 2011. She now says the experience left her \u2018traumatised\u2019<\/p>\n Adrianne Curry, the first ever winner of America\u2019s Next Top Model, turned down the chance to be interviewed for the Netflix documentary<\/p>\n Contestants were styled as murder victims \u2013 with fake wounds and dripping in mock blood \u2013 then arranged on various sets featuring police tape and chalk outlines. As well as being deeply tasteless, it was an impossibly cruel move from producers.<\/p>\n Contestant Dionne Walters had spoken on the show about her mother having been shot in real life, leaving her paralysed from the waist down. Despite that, her assigned scenario involved a fake gunshot wound to the head.<\/p>\n In the documentary Dionne says: \u2018I thought it was coincidence at the time, but I don\u2019t think it was. I think they wanted to see some kind of mental breakdown.\u2019<\/p>\n In another targeted move by producers, series four contestant Keenyah Hill \u2013 who judges considered to have gained weight \u2013 was cast as an elephant during an animal-themed photoshoot in South Africa. When the photos were analysed, Tyra\u2019s fellow judge Janice Dickinson told Keenyah: \u2018If you\u2019re sporting a gut, then you turn to the side and disguise it.\u2019<\/p>\n Banks added: \u2018It\u2019s all about choices, Keenyah. You can get a burger and take the bread off… If you don\u2019t fit the clothes, you don\u2019t work.\u2019<\/p>\n Keenyah was informed later by viewers that those clips had led them to develop eating disorders.<\/p>\n So who was to blame? According to Banks, it was the audience: \u2018We kept pushing and creating more and more and more. You guys were demanding it. The viewers wanted more and more and more.\u2019 That\u2019s not how former contestants remember it. Ahead of the Netflix documentary\u2019s release, the Daily Mail spoke to two former contestants, Adrianne Curry and Lisa D\u2019Amato \u2013 both of whom refused to be interviewed for the series.<\/p>\n Now 45, Lisa first appeared on America\u2019s Next Top Model in 2005 before returning to win the show\u2019s All-Stars season in 2011. She now says the experience left her \u2018traumatised\u2019. \u2018This was supposed to be a modelling competition,\u2019 she says. \u2018But it was psychological warfare.\u2019<\/p>\n Lisa, unlike the other models in their first series, had a successful modelling career under her belt. She claims producers used this against her, painting her as a \u2018villain\u2019 \u2013 and viewers believed she was one. \u2018It was terrifying,\u2019 she says. \u2018Social media was just coming into play, and no matter what I did, I was constantly harassed.\u2019<\/p>\n Lisa D\u2019Amato was a contestant on the show when\u00a0veteran supermodel Janice Dickinson, right, was one of the rotating judges<\/p>\n One of her most serious claims concerns the psychological testing contestants undergo before filming. \u2018You tell them everything [about your life]. I thought: \u201cOh my God, I get therapy through this whole thing.\u201d Turns out they use it as intel. Whatever they find out, they take notes and use it against you to break you down emotionally on the show.\u2019<\/p>\n During those pre-show interviews, Lisa revealed to producers that she had been molested as a child. She alleges they deliberately triggered her childhood trauma to provoke emotional reactions on camera. \u2018They were manipulating me \u2013 constantly bringing it up in my interviews.\u2019 She claims that this culture came from Banks herself.<\/p>\n \u2018Tyra was directing them to do that. Whenever we saw her when cameras weren\u2019t rolling yet, she was cold as ice to all of us. She never spoke to anyone unless cameras were on. There was no sense she cared about us.\u2019<\/p>\n Daily conditions, she says, were equally punishing. \u2018We weren\u2019t fed properly. We\u2019d work ten to 14-hour days and they\u2019d finally feed us \u2013 but it\u2019d be foods like Doritos or huge cheap pizzas.\u2019 That, she says, was yet another tactic to manipulate the weight-conscious models.<\/p>\n \u2018They tortured us if we didn\u2019t obey or if we complained. They wouldn\u2019t let you go to the bathroom when you needed. They\u2019d have you wait in cars for six or seven hours, sometimes ten. It\u2019s enough to send you crazy. It\u2019s inhumane.\u2019<\/p>\n Lisa, with the other series five contestants, were asked to appear on Banks\u2019s chat show after the season ended. Lisa claims producers pressured her to discuss her childhood sexual abuse on air \u2013 but she refused.<\/p>\n After receiving assurances that the topic would be dropped, she says it was raised live in front of a studio audience. Lisa is tearful as she recalls that day: \u2018Tyra says to the audience: \u201cYou all know Lisa is America\u2019s Next Top Model wild child, but what you don\u2019t know is she was sexually abused as was a kid.\u201d The audience gasped, and they pushed me out in front of a live studio audience.\u2019<\/p>\n After Lisa exploded in fury in front of the crowd, the footage never aired. As for her views on Netflix\u2019s \u2018expos\u00e9\u2019 of the series, Lisa says: \u2018Tyra can apologise all day long, but that same strategy, that same formula, is still being licensed, going to Tyra\u2019s bank account in other countries.\u2019<\/p>\n Adrianne Curry, the first ever winner of America\u2019s Next Top Model, was a small-town girl who believed the show \u2013 and its claims that the winner would get a contract with Revlon \u2013 would be her ticket to financial security. But it didn\u2019t turn out like that.<\/p>\n According to Adrianne, now 43, what the girls were told during filming was not what viewers later saw on television.<\/p>\n After production wrapped, she says Tyra re-recorded the prize announcement, and the language was softened in the edit \u2013 the guarantee of a contract with Revlon was replaced with merely \u2018the opportunity to maybe work with\u2019 the cosmetics giant.<\/p>\n After she won, months passed and she heard nothing from Revlon. \u2018Nine months later they finally used me to put make-up on my face in a closed room with four executives,\u2019 she says. \u2018That was what I won.\u2019<\/p>\n The only tangible reward, she claims, was $10,000 prize money.<\/p>\n Living in New York, waiting for her promised modelling career to materialise, she says she ended up borrowing from her struggling family. So, does she place all the blame with Tyra?<\/p>\n \u2018Tyra came from an industry that ate people alive, and she survived,\u2019 Adrianne says. \u2018You don\u2019t survive shark-infested waters unless you\u2019re the biggest great white. She\u2019s a product of what she was around.\u2019<\/p>\n But Adrianne certainly wouldn\u2019t be part of any documentary that included her.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s definitely damage control. It\u2019s like asking Lucifer himself to tell you that he\u2019s sorry for being the devil. But that\u2019s what you get from Hollywood.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The snaggle tooth is no longer!\u2019 announces 24-year-old Joanie, weary after a 12-hour ordeal in a luxury Hollywood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[894,97,96,59,21852,392,394,478,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-431883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-banks","tag-dailymail","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-janice-dickinson","tag-netflix","tag-new-york","tag-tvshowbiz","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Tyra](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/106460355-15568033-Tyra_Banks_claims_she_created_Top_Model_as_a_vehicle_to_fight_ag-m-3_177136348939.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Snaggle-toothed](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/106461849-15568033-image-a-128_1771354639317.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/106461853-15568033-image-m-127_1771354615858.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"America's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/106460351-15568033-image-a-119_1771350884311.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Lisa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/106460367-15568033-Lisa_D_Amato_first_appeared_on_America_s_Next_Top_Model_in_2005_-m-4_177136357047.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Adrianne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/106460549-15568033-Adrianne_Curry_the_first_ever_winner_of_America_s_Next_Top_Model-m-5_177136358759.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Lisa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/106461297-15568033-Lisa_D_Amato_was_a_contestant_on_the_show_when_veteran_supermode-m-6_177136360114.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n