There is a moment from the early days of “America’s Next Top Model” that has stayed with me. I was part of the reality series, in which young women competed to win a fashion modeling contract, from its inception in 2003. I went on to serve as its creative director for much of its 15-year, 24-cycle run. During Cycle 2, in the middle of a hectic makeover day, I walked up to one of the show’s producers with what I thought was a simple idea. “Have you ever thought about shooting behind the scenes of this show?” I asked. “Because the real show is what goes into making ‘A.N.T.M.’ ” I remember being shut down immediately. I was told that we would never break the fourth wall.
Now, two recent docuseries on Netflix and E! explore the making of “America’s Next Top Model,” bulldozing that fourth wall. Today, I find myself on the other side of the production. For years, I helped create television that promised audiences a glimpse of reality while shaping what they saw. Story lines were compressed, tensions heightened, personalities distilled into archetypes. It was television, after all. Real life, unedited, is not always that interesting to watch.
At the time when we started making “Top Model,” reality television was still young. None of us fully understood what we were building or what would make it successful. Contestants learned quickly that the audience would remember them better, and they would get more screen time, if they were understood in simple terms: the villain, the underdog, the source of comic relief. Complexity rarely survived the edit. And audiences often forgot that what they were watching was not real life but good TV.
Even the best-made documentary, like reality television itself, is an intentional shaping of the story. Experiencing this dynamic from the other side of the lens has been humbling. For the Netflix documentary series “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model,” I sat for hours of interviews over two days, answering whatever questions the documentarians asked. I believed in their approach. Watching the finished documentary, I was struck by which moments from those interviews made it into the final cut. It felt less like looking back at a television show and more like watching a version of my life told through a perspective that was no longer my own. For the first time, I found myself inside the narrative rather than helping to shape it.
There’s one particular moment that has resurfaced in both documentaries — a photo shoot in South Africa during Cycle 4 of “Top Model” involving the contestant Keenyah Hill.
At one point, Keenyah stopped the shoot because a male model was making her uncomfortable. In the Netflix documentary, when Keenyah tells her story of that day, it’s clear that the model had been sexually harassing her. At the time, I believed I was doing my job by encouraging her to finish the shoot. What the edit doesn’t show is that I had stepped away briefly to consult with the producers and directors before returning to speak with her. I remember asking them what I should do because I wasn’t sure what the right call was. The guidance was that, for the sake of fairness in the competition, each contestant had to complete the same assignment. I recall being told to reinforce that we were in a professional environment and to encourage her to continue. Those were the words I returned with and repeated to her on camera.
Behind every scene that makes it to air are real people navigating real emotions in real time. Watching that scene again through the lens of the documentary, I now see something clearly that I wish I had understood more fully in the moment: I had more power in that situation than she did.
Looking back, I recognize that I should have asked: What exactly was making her uncomfortable?
If a contestant says she feels uneasy or unsafe, that concern deserves immediate attention.
Keenyah deserved that.
Much of the public reaction to the Netflix documentary has focused on Tyra Banks and the power dynamics surrounding the show. I understand why. Tyra created and executive-produced “America’s Next Top Model” and carried the enormous responsibility of being both its public face and its creative engine. As a Black woman navigating an industry that has historically marginalized and discarded women who look like her, she achieved things in fashion and television that were game-changing.
I first met Tyra in the fashion world when I was brought in at the last minute to do her makeup for an event, and from there we began working together regularly. Over time, she came to trust my creative vision through the shoots I designed for her, and that trust ultimately led to my role as the creative director for the show. In the early seasons, I had a significant degree of creative autonomy. But as the show evolved, there were moments when I was executing decisions that weren’t mine and that I didn’t agree with. As I began to push back on some of those choices she made, the dynamic shifted — and tension began.
Some viewers feel that I am defending Tyra in interviews surrounding the documentary, while others feel that I am criticizing her, including by talking about why I tried to step away after Cycle 8. Those positions may appear contradictory. But in truth, they coexist within a complex relationship.
I am no longer bound by a nondisclosure agreement that once limited what I could say. Now I am speaking openly about my experience. Two things are true: I continue to respect the groundbreaking achievements Tyra brought to fashion and television long before “Top Model” existed, and I can also be honest about the complicated reality of the pressures and dynamics surrounding the show.
Watching the documentary, I began to recognize something I had seen only from the other side — how easily a lived experience can be turned into a narrative beyond our control. Even when the underlying facts are more complicated, what remains is the version that best fits the story.
When we try to force a friendship into a single story line — hero or villain, defender or critic — we repeat the very simplifications that reality television once relied upon. Perhaps the deeper lesson in all of this is that reality has never been as tidy as television.
I admired Tyra’s drive, her vision and the way she pushed against a world that often tried to define her. I saw the pressures she was carrying and the weight of what she was trying to build. Over time, as the show grew and the stakes got higher, the dynamic between us shifted, and so did my understanding of it. That left me questioning the version of our relationship I had once believed in.
It’s also difficult to separate friendship from business when the two become so deeply intertwined. At its core, “Top Model” was a business built to produce television that millions would watch, and it succeeded in that, but not without losing something along the way. Relationships are complicated. Power imbalances can exist within and alongside a genuine friendship. These contradictions are not evidence of deception. They are evidence of being human.
Jay Manuel is an author and television personality and the former creative director of “America’s Next Top Model.”
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