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America’s Next Top Model cycle 6 winner Dani Evans has closed the case on Tyra Banks pressuring her to close a gap in her teeth on the set of the controversial reality competition series.
In Entertainment Weekly‘s exclusive clip below from the upcoming Netflix docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model (out Monday, Feb. 16), the model — who competed on and eventually won the program in 2006 using her full name, Danielle Evans — reacts to Banks’ apology years after courting controversy for prompting the contestant to get a dental procedure on the show.
“I’ve actually apologized for the issue with Dani and what happened. That was between a rock and a hard place for me,” Banks, 52, says in the clip from the docuseries, which marks her first major on-camera interview about various ANTM controversies of the past.
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During cycle 6, Banks asked contestants Evans and Joanie Dodds to undergo dental work to address what the panel of judges perceived to be cosmetic tooth issues, with Dodds having a “snaggletooth” and Evans’ top row of teeth containing a gap in the front.
“There were agents that would tell me she will not work with those teeth, it’s just not going to happen,” Banks explains in the clip of why she wanted Evans to undergo the procedure. “That’s what they told me. I could’ve just been quiet and let them handle it. Hindsight is 20/20 for all of us. It just so happens that a lot of the things that are 20/20 for me happened in front of the world.”
Later in the docuseries, Evans, 40, reacts to Banks’ words, telling the camera point blank, “Bull f—ing s—. Me getting my gap closed is not opening any doors for me. You knew what you were doing for the show. You were making it good for TV, at my expense.”
Evans also reacts to a later edition of the show, cycle 15, across which Banks and her team actually urged one contestant, Chelsey Hersley, to widen a gap in her teeth.
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“People have told me one season that she got a gap created in a girl’s mouth,” Evans says. “Girl, that is absolutely ridiculous. What?”
EW has reached out to a representative for Banks for comment.
Reality Check chronicles many controversies surrounding ANTM over the years, including photo challenges that tasked the models with sporting dark makeup to portray women of different races on cycles 4 and 13, an allegation of sexual harassment on cycle 4, and the firing of longtime creative director Jay Manuel, who reveals in the series shocking allegations surrounding his departure.
Elsewhere in the series, Banks reveals that she’s bringing America’s Next Top Model back for another cycle, eight years after cycle 24 ended in 2018 on the show’s third network home, VH1 (though the show was never formally canceled).
“After the show, I had so many different ideas for my life. I’m obsessed with pivoting,” Banks says in the show, later adding, “I feel like my work is not done. You have no idea what we have planned for cycle 25.”
Reality Check lands after the show’s initially popular run on UPN, The CW, and VH1 from 2003-2018, though it underwent a modern re-evaluation in the age of social media, particularly during the COVID pandemic.
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As a result, EW conducted a 20th anniversary oral history on ANTM with 14 past contestants speaking out on various shocking moments from the show, including the switching-races shoots.
“I kept saying, ‘You guys are putting me in blackface,'” cycle 13’s Jennifer An previously told EW of the Hawaii-based shoot, alleging that the show’s team pinned her hair “so they could ‘fro my hair out” to complete her evolution into a woman with African heritage. “They definitely didn’t show any of that footage.”
Executive producer Ken Mok — who’s also featured in Reality Check — declined to comment at the time, while representatives for shoot director Manuel and producer Laura Fuest Silva did not respond to EW’s multiple requests for comment at the time.
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A representative for Banks, however, pointed to a prior statement from the host and producer. “I want to be very clear: I, in no way, put my ‘Top Models’ in blackface. I’m a Black woman. I am proud. I love my people and the struggle that we have gone through continues, and the last thing that I would ever do is be a part of something that degraded my race,” she said. “I’m sorry to anybody that watched Top Model and was offended by the pictures because they didn’t understand the real story behind them or even if you did see the whole episode and you were still offended, I truly apologize because that is not my intention. My intention is to spread beauty and break down barriers.”
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model debuts Monday, Feb. 16, on Netflix. Watch EW’s exclusive clip featuring Banks and Evans above.
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