Curse of America’s Next Top Model
When America’s Next Top Model premiered in the early 2000s, it looked like a golden ticket: a glamorous TV show that could catapult aspiring models into fame. But two decades later, many contestants describe its aftermath as a curse. Hosted by pop-culture journalist Bridget Armstrong, Curse of: America’s Next Top Model is a deep investigation into the hidden costs of reality television, and what the show’s legacy reveals about beauty, power, and the culture that cheered it on.
Through conversations with dozens of former contestants, producers and crew members, Curse of: America’s Next Top Model explores what happened behind the scenes on one of the most iconic and problematic reality shows of our generation.
The series starts off by exploring how ANTM almost didn’t get made. You get the real story behind the show’s most infamous controversies. The models and producers pull back the curtain and talk about how the most outrageous photoshoots and runaways came together. Hear from contestants who say ANTM saved their lives and from those who say it ruined theirs. The contestants also talk about how the body shaming they experienced on the show caused lifelong scars.
Finally, we try to answer the question, is Tyra Banks the ultimate reality television villain?
Curse of: America’s Next Top Model takes you on an investigative journey to figure out if the so-called curse is real? And if so, what was the toll on the models, and us, the audience?
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Featured Episode
The Set Up
Tyra Banks screamed it, but was she ever really rooting for these girls? In the series opener, host Bridget Armstrong explores one of ANTM’s biggest criticisms—that the show didn’t create any top models. We go back to the beginning to figure out how this germ of an idea in Tyra Banks’ imagination ended up on our screens. We talk about Tyra’s accomplice, ANTM Executive Producer Ken Mok, and explore how America’s Next Top Model was built on a formula of entertainment, desperation, and humiliati
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