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Reckoning with America’s Next Top Model

Tyra Banks is not the only villain.

When America’s Next Top Model premiered in 2002, it was a juggernaut. The show was a part of a cohort of programming that built the foundations of reality television as we know it today. A new documentary, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, asks the show’s creator, Tyra Banks, her collaborators, and former contestants to look back at some of the biggest moments in the show’s history and reckon with its legacy.

More than 20 years after the show first aired, viewers have found many elements of the show did not age well. In that time, our standards around reality television have surely changed. So, should we be evaluating the show through a 2026 lens?

Scaachi Koul, a culture writer for Slate, spoke with Today, Explained host Noel King about how much accountability we can expect from people like Banks and what a show like America’s Next Top Model tells us about ourselves. An excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Tell me why we’re talking about America’s Next Top Model again?

Culture moves in 20- to 30-year cycles. And so there’s always nostalgia that comes up with these things. That is a show that premiered right after 9/11. It speaks to a very particular slice of early to mid-aughts reality show culture.

We are in a phase where we’re rethinking all of those things. It is an interesting time to reassess the culture that continues to........

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