America’s Next Top Model helped define early-2000s reality TV, turning runway walks, questionable makeovers, and harsh critiques into cultural touchstones that still ricochet around social media today. Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model revisits the series’ biggest moments and uncovers behind-the-scenes insights through new interviews with the show’s key players. Following the documentary’s release, we checked in with featured judges and models (including some cycle winners) on what they’re doing today — and how they look back on the show’s high-gloss, high-pressure era.
Where are the ANTM models now?
Dani Evans (Winner, Cycle 6)
Reality Check revisits Danielle “Dani” Evans’s rocky road to winning Cycle 6, including the pressure she faced to correct her signature tooth gap. As depicted in the doc, the flareup highlighted the franchise’s shifting — and sometimes contradictory — beauty standards: years later, Cycle 16 finalist Chelsey Anne Hurless (née Hersley) had her gap surgically exaggerated. For Evans, it all underscored how much of her career and self-image felt subject to other people’s agendas. “It’s my life and it was toyed with constantly,” she says in the docuseries.
Evans also describes arriving in New York after her win expecting momentum, only to feel abandoned after the industry moved on. Ultimately, she says, she had to walk away from the modeling world to recover who she was. She began writing a memoir and describes being on a “journey of awakening, both spiritually and emotionally.” The experience has led her to understand how “all of the confusion, the heartbreak, the unknown, the failures — all those versions of myself have led me to the woman I am today.”
Ebony Haith (Cycle 1)
Ebony Haith’s experience on the show’s inaugural cycle included offensive remarks about her hair, skin texture, and lesbian identity. In Reality Check, Haith opens up for the first time publicly about the pain she endured. “My heart was breaking as I was on this national show, thinking that the world would be proud of me,” she says in the doc.
In her life since ANTM, Haith says she’s continued to pursue creative work while also building a life centered on wellness. Though the critiques she endured on ANTM followed her for years, she says the way she’s received now feels radically different: “It’s beautiful to be seen as an artist, then a woman, then a Black woman. … I have matured and understand that my authentic self is more than enough.”
Keenyah Hill (Cycle 4)
Keenyah Hill’s ANTM storyline revolved around critiques of her weight and eating habits. In the doc, Hill says it was crushing to realize that these jabs were “going to be my entire narrative,” calling them “unfair.” Reality Check also revisits a darker chapter from the cycle: a photo shoot in South Africa that Hill says she tried to halt after a male model aggressively hit on her and used the scene as an excuse to touch her. “To be on a TV set in front of so many people and still not be protected is some pretty dark stuff,” she says.
These days, Hill has built a career on helping others feel confident and prepared on camera. She’s the founder of Find Your Light, which offers pose coaching and development “to aspiring models and celebrities worldwide,” and she says she now teaches “models, influencers, actors, [and] politicians … how to pose from head to toe.” As a mentor, she’s intentional about giving clients the support she wishes contestants had received: “Society is finally in a space to embrace body positivity,” she says. “I’m just here to hold their hand on their path and help them shine.”
Giselle Samson (Cycle 1)
Giselle Samson’s ANTM experience included comments about her body that, as she says in Reality Check, “stayed with me forever.” Samson reflects now on how those moments chipped away at her confidence and followed her long after the show, shaping both how she saw herself and how the industry saw her. “For a long time, they affected how I viewed my own worth and whether I deserved to pursue the things I loved,” she says.
Now, Samson says she’s “fully immersed” in her “second act.” She’s returned to the stage and continues “to build momentum as a performer” while also launching business ventures, including a jewelry brand, Kiss the World. But it was her return to acting that helped rebuild the confidence the show shook. “Avoiding my dreams hurt more than the opinions that had once defined me,” she tells Tudum. “Going back to theater was a turning point. … It reconnected me to my confidence and sense of purpose.”
Bre Scullark (Cycle 5)
Reflecting on her time on ANTM in Reality Check, Bre Scullark points out just how young many contestants were when they entered the pressure-cooker reality show. “We were put into a very mature adult world very fast,” she says in the doc. “That was hard. We were just girls.”
For nearly a decade, Scullark has found her calling far from the world of fashion, as a public health educator on Rikers Island, offering trauma-informed care with mindfulness and meditation via virtual reality headsets. “The environment and culture of incarcerated settings are the most difficult spaces to provide peace of mind,” she says, “but they are most necessary.” Scullark calls her work “incredibly informative, healing, and fulfilling,” and says she’s grateful her clients allow her to witness them “at their most vulnerable.” It’s an experience that’s also changed her for the better, she says: “We grow together in this space.”
Joanie Sprague (Cycle 6)
The documentary revisits one of ANTM’s most (literally) jaw-dropping makeover moments, when Joanie Sprague (née Dodds) had multiple teeth removed to transform her smile. It marked the first time the show sent a contestant to a doctor’s office for a medical makeover. As if that wasn’t enough, Sprague recounts in Reality Check how she later learned “they didn’t always choose our best picture,” an insight that made it clear just how much of what viewers saw was shaped to fit a narrative.
These days, Sprague has built a career in construction, a vocation she calls “a true passion.” After appearing on multiple home improvement shows, she’s now proud to call herself a “full-time carpenter/handyma’am and content creator.” She also teaches woodworking classes and says she has “a passion for getting more women into the trades.” Looking back at the show now, she’s pragmatic about what it was built to do: “At the end of the day, I realize that it was a TV show built for ratings, and I understand they had to make choices to keep things interesting. So I’m not mad.”
Shannon Stewart (Cycle 1)
After placing second in ANTM’s very first cycle, Shannon Stewart moved to New York and signed with a modeling agency. But even after the show gave her “a platform, a voice, and opportunities I never could have imagined,” she says, she found herself “growing tired of being seen only on the surface.”
Stewart has since built a life around community and candid storytelling. She hosts a podcast called Out of Focus, where she shares “real, raw stories about identity, pressure, faith, and what happens when life doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would,” and is also writing a memoir of the same name. She and her husband lead a church community in North Carolina called Be Renewed, which she describes as a “heart hospital.” Now, she says her faith has put her on sturdier footing than fame ever could: “Healing doesn’t come from applause. It comes from truth, grace, and being fully known.”
Shandi Sullivan (Cycle 2)
In Reality Check, Shandi Sullivan reflects on how the show transformed her into a classic “ugly duckling to swan” storyline — only for one of her most vulnerable moments to become a defining public narrative. The docuseries revisits a now-infamous night in Milan, when she and other contestants drank wine in a hot tub with male models. Sullivan, who had a boyfriend at the time, ended up kissing one of them and bringing him home.
“I was blacked out. No one did anything to stop it. And it all got filmed. Every moment of it,” Sullivan reveals in the doc.
Years later, Sullivan says the pain resurfaced when she appeared on Tyra Banks’s talk show for an ANTM reunion and asked that the footage from that night not to be shown — only for production to play it anyway. “I literally told you behind the scenes I don’t want to see it. Don’t show it,” she says in Reality Check. “You didn’t respect that at all.”
These days, Sullivan has built a quieter life around what keeps her grounded. She co-hosts the horror-movie podcast Urn Fulla Popcorn and works full-time for a cat-sitting company, which she calls “a dream job.” While she’s candid that “the pain hasn’t gone away” and “continues to affect” her, she focuses on “little bouts of happiness” — “doing the podcast with my best friend, hanging out with my cats, or creating art.”
Whitney Thompson (Winner, Cycle 10)
In the doc, Whitney Thompson revisits what it meant to win ANTM as a plus-size model in an era when inclusion was still rare. She says neither the show nor the industry were always equipped to support curvier models, even when it came to basics, like when she would arrive on set and find nothing in her size. “They could easily have gotten clothes that were my size, but that was a choice that they made,” she says in Reality Check. “Because if they see weakness, you’re gone.”
Thompson says the obstacles didn’t stop once she won. Despite encountering agencies and publications that had no experience with plus models, she felt that “failure wasn’t an option” — not just for her but for “every single curvy woman (and man) watching.” These days, she says she’s retired from a successful modeling career after booking Italian Vogue because she wanted to “go out on top.” After marrying a chef and owning a few restaurants across the US, she says she now spends much of her time traveling with her family — finally experiencing the places her career once only let her fly in and out of.
Dionne Walters (Cycle 8)
In Reality Check, Dionne Walters reflects on how ANTM tested contestants’ limits—and how she sometimes sensed production was hoping to capture a breaking point. The doc revisits a gun violence-themed photo shoot that landed especially close to home: Walters says the show had known since her application process that her mother had survived a shooting and was paralyzed from the waist down.
“I think they wanted to see some type of mental breakdown or see me crumble,” she says in the doc. “I’m glad they didn’t get the reaction they were hoping to get.”
(In Reality Check, ANTM executive producer Ken Mok says, “I take full responsibility for that shoot. It was a mistake.”)
These days, Walters runs an online hair company called MEDECI, works as a realtor, and travels often — especially throughout South America. “Most importantly,” she says, “I’m enjoying life as a proud basketball mom.” And while the documentary revisits her time on the reality show, Walters emphasizes that her life since has been self-directed: “Honestly, my participation on ANTM has not influenced the current chapters of my life post-ANTM,” she says. “I’ve built my path based on my own drive, discipline, and vision for the life I wanted to create.”
Where are the ANTM judges now?
Jay Manuel
Tyra Banks’s former makeup artist Jay Manuel joined America’s Next Top Model for its inaugural cycle as a judge and creative director. In Reality Check, he reflects on how personal relationships and power dynamics shaped the show behind the scenes. Now, with “perspective — and age and experience,” he says his role sits differently with him now than it did during the show’s “high-pressure environment.”
“When we were making the show, I was very much a people pleaser, trying to support the network, the producers, Tyra, and the contestants all at once. I was pulled in too many directions, and I wasn’t always as anchored in my own voice as I should have been,” he tells Tudum.
These days, Manuel says his work has “really shifted toward storytelling,” including producing and developing projects with filmmakers whose voices feel “personal and urgent.” He’s also writing, adapting his novel, The Wig, the Bitch, and the Meltdown (inspired by life behind the cameras of ANTM), for the screen. Time and distance from the show, he says, have given him the clarity to acknowledge what he’d handle differently today: “There is a way to challenge people without diminishing them.”
Nigel Barker
Photographer Nigel Barker joined ANTM in Cycle 2 and helped form the show’s core panel for nearly a decade, bringing fashion-world critiques to the show’s larger-than-life photo shoots. In Reality Check, he reflects on the tension between judging a modeling competition with care and delivering feedback within a format built for buzzy moments.
Barker says his goal was always “constructive criticism” — but acknowledges how easily that intention could be distorted in the edit. “The reality of television editing meant that often only one dimension made it to air, which could create the impression that feedback was purely negative,” he says. “What appeared as a brief, sometimes harsh critique on screen was actually part of a much longer, more nuanced conversation designed to help these young women grow and succeed.”
After leaving ANTM, Barker says what “initially felt like an ending actually opened the door” to new opportunities. Those included hosting NBC’s The Face alongside Naomi Campbell, launching YouTube’s Top Photographer, and — more recently — parlaying his spirits podcast Shaken & Stirred into a new bottled-cocktail venture, the Barker Company. While he still shoots “big-budget, over-the-top productions” that recall his Top Model days, he says he now gravitates more toward “small and meaningful” work: “My heart belongs to the intimacy of portrait photography.”
Miss J
J. Alexander — better known as Miss J — joined America’s Next Top Model in Cycle 1 as the show’s runway coach. He became a fixture on the judging panel thanks to over-the-top critiques, signature walk demos, and one-liners that still live on in GIFs. In Reality Check, Alexander reveals that he survived a stroke in December 2022, beginning a long road to recovery.
“After spending five weeks in a coma and one year and five months in the hospital, I’m alive to tell it as I lived it,” he says.
Asked how he’s doing now, he sums it up simply: “Fine — healing and dealing.” And when it comes to why he agreed to revisit the show, he frames it as only he can: “Why not take the chance [to] revisit, to set the record straight — I was the most fabulous one on the show.”
For more on Alexander’s health news, head over to our interview with him and Reality Check directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan.
As the ANTM alums’ updates make clear, the story didn’t end at elimination — or even at a win. Revisit the show’s most memorable cycles and the cultural conversations they sparked: Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is now streaming.
