“Top Model” alum says Tyra Banks regularly argued with producer during tense eliminations (exclusive)

Between contestant Ren Vokes’ notable clash with competitor Alasia Ballard and a (literally) hair-raising photo shoot that saw the models shading one another from the sidelines, America’s Next Top Model cycle 14 was one of the most dramatic in the reality competition’s history. Now, contestant Alexandra Underwood tells Entertainment Weekly that she witnessed a few off-camera moments of tension between producer-host Tyra Banks and executive producer Ken Mok.

“I remember when we’d tape eliminations, there was a lot of back-and-forth between Tyra and Ken Mok,” Underwood recalls to EW in a new interview, 16 years after she first competed on ANTM in 2010.

Underwood says that “they argued a lot” during panel deliberations, which she also alleges included “predetermined” eliminations — a sentiment echoed by former creative director Jay Manuel in the new Reality Check docuseries, in which he alleged that production would purposely select bad photos for models they wanted to eliminate.

Underwood tells EW that Mok and Banks “argued a lot,” because, in her estimation, “it didn’t seem like they were on the same page of how they wanted things to be shown” in the final edit.

When EW presses Underwood, who tied with Angelea Preston for third place on cycle 14, for example, she says she can’t remember, and suggests that a non-disclosure agreement might be holding her back.

“I don’t even know what I’m still allowed to talk about anymore,” she admits.

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Despite working with members of production she feels positively about — including the late producer David St. John, who died in 2025 — Underwood tells EW, “I remember the moment I realized this wasn’t what I signed up for,” before recalling what she says happened on the set of the aforementioned shoot that tasked models with posing in gowns made of human hair.

“When one of our opponents is up there modeling, they wanted us to jeer and put them down,” she alleges. When EW viewed the episode, the models are shown breaking off into teams led by hairstylists Weaven Steven and Derek J — the latter of whom is later shown telling models to “yell,” “holler,” and “scream” at the other contestants as they pose, which they are eventually shown doing.

“You can actually see in my photo, when I’m up there, I’m holding back tears, I’m crying,” recalls Underwood. “In my photo that they chose [to show at panel], I’m crying, because I was like, this isn’t what I signed up for. To me, being mean to each other was not supposed to be part of it. It was very low.”

Underwood’s EW interview comes after many contestants and judges — including show alums interviewed for Reality Check — have alleged problematic experiences during production.

Of the instances — many of which were also covered in EW’s 20th anniversary oral history on the show in 2023 — models in the three-part docuseries speak about two separate shoots that tasked contestants with portraying women of different races through the use of dark makeup.

“I kept saying, ‘You guys are putting me in blackface,'” cycle 13 star Jennifer An told EW at the time, also 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.”

In a statement to EW in 2023, a then-spokesperson for Banks said that the intention of the shoot was to combat an industry where “lighter skin and straight hair were pervasive beauty standards,” which “perpetuated deep insecurities within women.” The spokesperson maintains that such shoots were “meant to be a moment celebrating and spotlighting underrepresented ideologies of beauty — textured hair and darker skin — on a global scale.”

Representatives for Banks and Mok have not responded to EW’s repeated additional requests for comment in recent weeks. EW has also reached out to a representative for Derek J for comment.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly