America’s Subsequent High Mannequin: The present’s sophisticated legacy, defined

[ad_1] When America’s Subsequent High Mannequin premiered in 2002, it was a juggernaut. The present was part of a cohort of programming that constructed the foundations of actuality tv as we all know it at the moment. A brand new documentary, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model , asks the present’s creator, Tyra Banks , her collaborators, and former contestants to look again at a few of the greatest moments within the present’s historical past and reckon with its legacy.

Greater than 20 years after the present first aired, viewers have discovered many parts of the present didn't age properly. In that point, our requirements round actuality tv have absolutely modified. So, ought to we be evaluating the present by means of a 2026 lens?

Scaachi Koul, a tradition author for Slate , spoke with Today, Explained host Noel King about how a lot accountability we are able to count on from folks like Banks and what a present like America’s Subsequent High Mannequin tells us about ourselves. An excerpt of their dialog, edited for size and readability, is under.

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Inform me why we’re speaking about America’s Subsequent High Mannequin once more?

Tradition strikes in 20- to 30-year cycles. And so there’s all the time nostalgia that comes up with these items. That may be a present that premiered proper after 9/11. It speaks to a really explicit slice of early to mid-aughts actuality present tradition.

We're in a section the place we’re rethinking all of these issues. It's an attention-grabbing time to reassess the tradition that continues to dominate. The entire issues we watch, they're all guided by these actuality exhibits from 2000 to 2010.

What was America’s Subsequent High Mannequin ?

It was a actuality competitors present. They might convey on a bunch of youngsters and younger girls. They might get these women, they put them in a home collectively, they usually must do these modeling competitions each week.

The present created an entire lexicon for us that we didn’t have earlier than. It was such a wierd fever dream of a present. It's precisely like loads of actuality competitors nonetheless, but it surely was so particular and peculiar and saliently, helmed by a lunatic.

Tyra [Banks] was cuckoo bananas, and that’s why we beloved her. She was superb TV. She was all the time attempting to trick the women. There’s one the place she pretends to faint in entrance of them. After which they put it within the present.

A lot of what the documentary has to grapple with, finally, is what was taking place on that present was sheer lunacy. And a few of what went on within the present is on reflection somewhat appalling.

Let’s discuss by means of a few of the issues that the documentary tries to deal with, and I need to begin with a mannequin named Shandi.

Shandi has possibly probably the most devastating story within the documentary. She was somebody that I nonetheless remembered. She was on the second season of the present. She appeared primed to win, in reality.

Close to the top of the present, they take all of the fashions to Milan and whereas she was there, she obtained actually drunk and there have been a bunch of male fashions. And within the present’s model, whenever you watch it in actual time, it’s like a drunken hookup. She cheats on her boyfriend in Milan and that’s the way it’s framed. And her disgrace is, I can’t consider I did this to my boyfriend.

While you watch the documentary, it's recast not — I wouldn’t even say it’s a 2026 lens. I don’t essentially suppose that it's. I feel lots of people nonetheless view sexual assault like this and nonetheless view consuming and ladies like this, however she’s an grownup, and so now actually, in her maturity, she’s ready to have a look at this and be like, yeah, that wasn’t a spot the place I might consent.

Is anybody held to account for the way in which Shandi was handled?

Lots of people need extra duty from Tyra, and I get that she’s the face of it and particular person to ask, however these exhibits are constellations of individuals. There’s lots of people who work on these exhibits and there’s lots of people who've duty for it, and a few of them are within the doc and possibly a few of them aren’t.

What occurred with Shandi is there’s 5, six, 10 individuals who need to say okay to that. And you retain saying it and you retain saying it. That's what’s attention-grabbing to me, how the machine lets that cross.

There was a mannequin, Dani, who had a phenomenal, charming, pleasant hole in her entrance enamel. And she or he was made to shut it. Inform me about how the documentary offers with younger girls being advised one thing distinct about you shouldn't be proper, it’s not ok.

It’s a troublesome gig that Tyra gave herself as a result of she’s attempting to inform these girls, that is how the trade works and these are the issues you might want to do to have the ability to thrive in it. On the similar time, she’s propagating those self same issues.

I believed her and I nonetheless consider her when she would say, you might want to drop a few pounds since you’re not going to get a canopy lady marketing campaign in case you’re greater. Which was true on the time. It’s nonetheless true for lots of campaigns.

Tyra says, “That is what I knew with the data that I had.” I sort of consider her. The present was nonetheless involved in shifting that narrative ahead and ensuring that was the stress. The purpose of the present was the stress between who you had been and who you're purported to develop into.

You watched the documentary. What did you need to get out of it and what do you are feeling such as you obtained out of it? Did it really feel like an trustworthy reckoning?

Intent and outcome are all the time totally different. And I don’t know what the intent was, however I feel with the outcome, she comes off trying like what we knew her to be, which is fairly craven, and fairly conscious of what she’s carried out, and never that sorry.

That’s what we purchased. And the concept she goes to be this font of accountability — I don’t suppose that’s doubtless. Lots of her solutions are like, “Effectively, that was the time.” That’s all the time the argument folks make.

I by no means actually get that in hindsight, as a result of it’s nonetheless the time. The president is posting gifs or AI movies of the one and solely Black president we’ve had as a monkey. So I don’t truly know that it's of a time. It’s simply of a distinct place.

That sort of stuff doesn’t reside in actuality TV prefer it used to, but it surely permeated in every single place else and it has all the time been there. [Banks] was responding to what she had, however we're all the time responding to what we have now and we all the time have this.

It truly has by no means actually improved. In the future we get to resolve if we’d like to enhance it. I feel these retrospectives are worthwhile as a result of they assist us see how the Overton window has moved and the place it’s moved, and the way we are able to possibly shift it again.