How badly is Tyra Banks getting slammed online after Netflix‘s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model documentary? Badly enough that season one winner Adrianne Curry has put aside her open dislike for Banks to defend the embattled host and executive producer.
Curry posted a lengthy pushback against the “HOA Karen Cancel Mob” going after Banks in the wake of the three-part documentary, in which Banks came across largely unsympathetic amid the filmmakers’ attempts to portray the long-running reality hit as utterly cruel and dehumanizing (here are the seven biggest revelations in Reality Check).
“Ugh, I hate that I have to do this,” began Curry, who refused to participate in the documentary. “I don’t think Tyra should be canceled. I don’t think being an asshole merits the hate and HOA Karen cancel mob she is getting. I was deeply hurt by Tyra and [executive producer] Ken Mok … but people trying to ‘hurt’ them does absolutely nothing to make me feel better. It feels the opposite. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I forgive them. I am grateful for everything I did get from that experience…and take the bad stuff as the ultimate learning curve in how Hollywood operates. LIE, cheat, manipulate, repeat … It’s what they do … humiliate … exploit. It’s the name of the game. Reality TV stars are glorified Jerry Springer guests.
“People act like what Tyra did is worse than Bill Gates and Epstein,” she continued. “It isn’t. She and Ken acted exactly as everyone else in Entertainment does. It’s not a place that is going to protect you or care about you. Reality TV producers exploit and humiliate you based off what you give them. They froth at the mouth for you to make a mistake that they can then monetize.”
After detailing the humiliation suffered by Verne Troyer on The Surreal Life, Curry circled back to Reality Check and Banks.
“I can’t believe I have to come to her defense … but Naomi Campbell beat heads in with phones and people didn’t hate her as much as I see people hating Tyra,” she alleged. “Being a dickhead isn’t illegal, people. Let the girls on the show have their anger … or their gratefulness … and hopefully, their forgiveness of themselves and these people. Forcing people to apologize for crap they are not sorry for is a damn struggle session and it feels…evil.”
Curry concludes, “Wherever Tyra and Ken are … I am both grateful and disappointed [in] how things went down. I forgive being stricken from the show’s history, erased from its memory. I forgive things not being what we were told they’d be. I’m humbled and grateful I got what I did. I don’t think what the public is doing … this Karen Accountability Struggle Session is right … but I’m not going to label you two angels. Thank you and f%ck off, respectfully.”
Before Reality Check aired, Curry wrote that judging the show by modern cultural standards is “absurd.”
“I think people psychoanalyzing it over 20 years later with a woke lens is absurd,” she wrote. “I don’t trust people to not manipulate things I say for TV so I decline everything. Also, the public is cult-like and cruel, so the last thing I want is a bunch of eyeballs on me … I have [zero] trust in any producers, no desire to be really public in this day and age … and am hard retired from Hollywood.”
Here are seven biggest revelations in Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, from allegations of fat shaming to accusations of racism, where we similarly suggested the documentary was trying too hard to turn the show into a “cultural war crime.”
Banks had no immediate comment. Curry’s comments above have been slightly edited for punctuation.
