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\n Is Tyra Banks the villain? It depends on whom you ask.\n <\/p>\n
\n A new Netflix docuseries has reopened the wounds of \u201cAmerica\u2019s Next Top Model,\u201d the popular reality show that began by promising young women a chance at a real modeling career and ended as a meme machine for its problematic photo shoots and judging.\n <\/p>\n
\n Over three episodes, Banks, former contestants and other judges, including the photographer Nigel Barker, look back at the show, which ran from 2003 to 2018. Some slam Banks, while Banks herself seeks to set the record straight from her perspective. And then there is Barker, who tries, as he did on the original show, to walk a balanced line.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWere there mistakes? Yeah. Lots. Was Tyra responsible for all of them? No, of course not,\u201d Barker told celebrity.land last week, ahead of the Monday release of \u201cReality Check: Inside America\u2019s Next Top Model.\u201d \u201cBut was she a part of it? Yes.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cBut, also,\u201d he added, \u201cwhen a woman is the head of something and a businesswoman, people often condemn women in different ways than they would if a man had done things.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Banks already had a lucrative career as a model when she created the reality show featuring young women going through a series of challenges to win the title of \u201ctop model,\u201d which included a contract with a major agency. Banks also hosted and executive produced the program.\n <\/p>\n
\n With its fixation on high fashion, thinness and proximity to celebrity, \u201cAmerica\u2019s Next Top Model\u201d mirrored the times in which it aired and became a cultural phenomenon. The show gained a new life during the pandemic, becoming popular among some who weren\u2019t even born when it debuted.\n <\/p>\n
\n As the years went on, many challenges were increasingly viewed with derision, including a photo shoot in which contestants were made up to be different races and another in which a contestant whose mother had been shot and paralyzed was made to pose as a gunshot victim. Contestants were often criticized for their weight.\n <\/p>\n
\n Barker served as a photographer and judge for 18 seasons of the show before he and his friends \u201cthe two Jays\u201d \u2014 runway coach and judge J. Alexander, also known as Miss J, and creative director and judge Jay Manuel, also known as Mr. Jay \u2014 were let go in 2012.\n <\/p>\n
\n These days, while he doesn\u2019t dismiss the criticism of the show, he also sees another perspective.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cA lot of times people weren\u2019t talking about, say, petite models. They weren\u2019t talking about plus size models. They weren\u2019t talking about models of color, but Tyra did and brought those subjects up,\u201d Barker told celebrity.land. \u201cVery touchy, very difficult subjects to talk about. And as a result, people talked about them and they got out in the open air, and then we kind of made decisions and said, oh, that was terrible.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Though time has put some of how those discussions unfolded under a new microscope, Barker said he is proud to point out that \u201cno one was talking about it until we did it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAnd so I hope that some of that comes through too, and that there is compassion on all sides and reason on all sides,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n The contents of the three-episode docuseries, which Barker saw in its entirety prior to its debut, surprised even him in some cases.\n <\/p>\n
\n One case involves Shandi Sullivan, a contestant on cycle 2, as the seasons are called. When the show initially aired, one episode featured a scene in which Sullivan was presented as having had sex with a man she met during a trip to Milan with her fellow contestants. Others witnessed the incident, which took place in the presence of the film crew. When the show aired, Sullivan was presented as distraught after realizing she\u2019d cheated on her boyfriend back home.\n <\/p>\n
\n In the docuseries, Sullivan reveals she was inebriated and could not have consented to having sex with the man, whom she had met while filming, as he and others had transported the contestants during their time in the Italian city.\n <\/p>\n
\n Sullivan tells the Netflix filmmakers that she was \u201chammered\u201d after drinking wine during a dinner when the group of Vespa drivers were invited to come over by production.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI remember him just like on top of me,\u201d she says in the docuseries. \u201cI was blacked out. No one did anything to stop it. And it all got filmed, all of it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n