America's Next Top Model aired from 2003 through 2018 and has gained some new eyes in recent years as people have revisited the competition series for the nostalgia -- only to see that a lot of aspects of the show have not aged well.
Now, Vice's show The Dark Side of Reality TV has made an episode focused on America's Next Top Model and revealed that the show wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Former contestants from the show opened up about the fact that the show made viewers hate them, gave them deep insecurities, and that they felt completely abandoned and without the modeling career they were promised after the show ended.
A two-cycle ANTM contestant said the show ruined her image in the modeling world
Lisa D'Amato appeared on two cycles (the word used in the show for seasons of the reality show), 5 and 17, and says that being made to look like the villain of the show completely ruined her image on the show and off, something that she's still struggling with years after leaving the competition.
"It made everybody around the globe hate me. And it made me hate myself for years," Lisa D'Amato said and went on to say that the producers of the show made her look like she was the "alcoholic villain" of the competition. In the episode of the Vice docuseries, she says that being on ANTM gave her a stigma that followed her into her modeling career after the show and made it more difficult for her to land modeling jobs because of the reputation she had from the show.
"They don't care if you live or die afterwards. Nothing happened with my modeling career," Lisa D'Amato said and said that after leaving the show, she was made to feel like nothing but "reality TV garbage."
Considering the show promised to take a hopeful, young model and boost them into the spotlight of the modeling world, complete with a cash prize and modeling contracts, it's no surprise that contestants like Lisa D'Amato expected to have a career after the show and was disappointed to be left with nothing.
ANTM contestants say filming the competition show was "f---ed up"
Cycle 9's Sarah Hartshorne has been open in the past about the problems she had while filming America's Next Top Model.
According to a post on X (formerly Twitter), contestants were paid $40 per episode, had to pay for their own food -- except on photoshoot days where they were provided with two meals, and did not receive any residual payments from the series.
Sarah Hartshorne opened up more about her experience on ANTM during the Vice docuseries episode and said that the fact that they were often hungry and unprepared for the situations that Tyra Banks and the producers put them into was no accident.
"Production kept us in the dark about almost everything because they wanted to keep us on edge," she said and alleged that the producers felt that having the contestants confused, hungry, and tired made the competition series more interesting to viewers.
Other competitors are thankful for their time on ANTM
While the episode did feature some contestants that had perfectly understandable issues with their time on America's Next Top Model, there were also contestants featured in The Dark Side of Reality TV that are thankful for their time on Tyra Banks' competeition show and say they would do it all over again.
Cycle 4 contestant Brittany Bower says that even though she realizes that the producers were doing things just to get the maximum number of viewers and that there were some things that annoyed her during filming, she says she would "100% do it again" if she was given the chance.
Similarly, a top 3 finalist from cycle 4 Keenyah Hill gives some credit for the two decades she's been in the modeling world to her time on the show.
Keenyah Hill said that she would also do the show again and on the episode, she said, "No matter where I go in the world, I'm recognized."