4.4 • 10.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2025
⏱️ 4 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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’ll get the real story behind the show’s most infamous controversies. Then, the models and producers pull back the curtain and talk about how the most outrageous photoshoots and runaways came together. You’ll 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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| 0:00.0 | Think back to the early 2000s. |
| 0:02.0 | You're flipping through TV channels, and then you hear this. |
| 0:05.9 | I was rooting for you. |
| 0:07.0 | We were all rooting for you. |
| 0:08.4 | How dare you? |
| 0:09.7 | Learn something from this. |
| 0:14.4 | America's next top model was my show, and it might have been yours too. |
| 0:19.8 | But these days, that iconic show that so many of us |
| 0:23.0 | love seems pretty horrifying. Robin, first of all, is too old to be starting a model. She's huge. |
| 0:31.5 | She's got rolls of skin that hang over her jeans. Do you really think you can have a cover girl |
| 0:35.8 | contract with the gap in your mouth? Today, some people think A&M was cursed because of what happened to so many of the models |
| 0:43.3 | once the camera stopped rolling. |
| 0:45.3 | I was in debt after the show. |
| 0:47.3 | We basically sold our souls and they got rich. |
| 0:52.3 | I'm Bridget Armstrong, and this is the curse of America's Next Top Model. |
| 0:57.2 | I'm a journalist covering pop culture, |
| 0:59.8 | and for the past six months, |
| 1:01.3 | I've been investigating the real story of A&TM |
| 1:04.1 | by talking to the models, the producers, |
| 1:06.3 | and the people who profited from it all. |
| 1:08.8 | We're starting at the very beginning, |
| 1:10.7 | but the story of how this show almost didn't happen. |
... |
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