ANTM winner Adrianne Curry slams 'woke lens' of criticism for Tyra Banks show amid new docuseries...

EW debuted an exclusive trailer for a new exposé docuseries probing &34;America's Next Top Model&34; history, while Curry previously spoke to EW about her time on the show. ANTM winner Adrianne Curry slams 'woke lens' of criticism for Tyra Banks show amid new docuseries: 'Cultlike and cruel' EW debuted an exclusive trailer for a new exposé docuseries probing &34;America's Next Top Model&34; history, while Curry previously spoke to EW about her time on the show. :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/JoeyNolfiauthorphotoba4923fec03a4027868306485696ef41.jpg) Joey Nolfi is a senior writer at .

EW debuted an exclusive trailer for a new exposé docuseries probing "America's Next Top Model" history, while Curry previously spoke to EW about her time on the show.

ANTM winner Adrianne Curry slams 'woke lens' of criticism for Tyra Banks show amid new docuseries: 'Cult-like and cruel'

EW debuted an exclusive trailer for a new exposé docuseries probing "America's Next Top Model" history, while Curry previously spoke to EW about her time on the show.

Joey Nolfi is a senior writer at *. *Since 2016, his work at EW includes *RuPaul's Drag Race* video interviews, Oscars predictions, and more.

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January 27, 2026 10:06 a.m. ET

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Adrianne Curry; Tyra Banks. Credit:

Donald Bowers/Getty; Sylvain Gaboury/FilmMagic

- *ANTM* cycle 1 winner Adrianne Curry has spoken out against the "woke lens" criticizing Tyra Banks' show.

- EW debuted an exclusive first look at a new exposé docuseries, which Curry said she declined to participate in.

- Despite saying she turns down requests for interviews, Curry spoke to EW for a 2023 retrospective on the show.

After **'s exclusive debut of a first look at a new Netflix docuseries examining the controversial history of *America's Next Top Model*, Adrianne Curry, the Tyra Banks-led reality show's first winner, has slammed the "woke lens" of criticism she feels is unjustly lobbed at the fashion competition series.

More than two decades after winning cycle 1 in 2003, Curry, who once spoke out against the show after her victory, took aim at the contemporary reevaluation of Banks' boundary-breaking show, after many have raised issues about challenges that saw models darkening their skin to portray different races, judges body-shaming contestants, and more.

"I am deeply grateful I won the first season of top model. i think people psychoanalyzing it over 20 years later with a woke lens is absurd," the 43-year-old wrote on X, shortly after the release of the trailer for *Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model.* "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."

'ANTM' cycle 1 cast on 'Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model'.

Curry did, however, agree to an interview with EW in 2023 for a 20th anniversary article highlighting the most shocking moments in *ANTM* history, during which she spoke about an instance of on-camera sexual assault in Paris and allegedly not receiving the full prize package she was promised while competing on the program.

"What I won was to go to Revlon corporate, sit in a back room, have a makeup artist put makeup on my face for a team of about seven people watching me. Who the f--- would fight as hard as we fought for that?" Curry told EW at the time, adding that she was "f---ing humiliated" by the gig — which she claimed paid only $15,000 — after she said the show's panel of judges spent the first cycle on UPN promising the young women would become "huge Revlon models" with careers comparable to that of Cindy Crawford and Banks.****On X this week, Curry doubled down on pushing back against the new docuseries, writing, "I hope the other girls do not have their words twisted in their netflix show."

'ANTM' star says 'dismissive' Jay Manuel snubbed her at awards show: 'Looked at me like, ugh'

'ANTM' star says her elimination hand gesture was cast's coded 'f--- you' to Tyra Banks

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In response to a user who replied to Curry's message by writing, "That documentary is going to be a s--- show with a lease to make Tyra come out looking better than she deserves imo," Curry wrote: "I feel the same way...I worry about the girls from my season who agreed to do it."

In EW's exclusive trailer for the project, several contestants are featured speaking about their time on the show, including Whitney Thompson (cycle 10 winner), Danielle Evans (cycle 6 winner), Keenyah Hill (cycle 4 finalist), and Curry's cycle 1 costar, Giselle Samson.

As EW first reported in 2024, Banks herself also sat for her first in-depth interview about *ANTM*'s controversies, while judges Nigel Barker, Jay Manuel, and Miss J. Alexander also returned to appear in the docuseries.**

Elsewhere on X, Curry's responses to her initial message ranged from reiterating her retirement from Hollywood to other surprising reveals about cycle 1, including a "fun fact," in which she said that "no one else would room with the lasbian [*sic*].... but me," in the contestants' New York City house, referencing fellow model and the show's first lesbian contestant, Ebony Haith.

"And it got me a room with ONLY her and I in it. ...which was AWESOME!!" Curry continued.

Miss J. Alexander and Tyra Banks on 'America's Next Top Model'.

Michael Yarish/CBS Photo Archive/Getty

In recent months, Curry spoke out about a makeover she received on the program, alleging in a social media post that the makeover "permanently damaged" her scalp and left her partially bald more than two decades later.

Curry said she "had an oozing wound from the braid" and that "half my hair had been ripped out," which she attempted to get fixed after filming ended. (A representative for Banks did not respond to EW's request for comment at the time.)

Though she hasn't, in a significant capacity, spoken about *ANTM*'s controversies over the years, supermodel and Emmy-winning talk show host Banks perhaps gave her strongest defense of *Top Model* to date while on stage at the 2025 *Essence* Black Women in Hollywood Awards.

'ANTM' judge Jay Manuel in 'Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model'.

At the event, she admitted to attendees that she said "some dumb s---" on the program. "I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together on the internet when there were 24 cycles of changing the world," she said, pointing toward casting models who bucked industry trends, such as cycle 11's trans model Isis King, cycle 12's Tahlia Brookins, who had burn scars all over her body, several plus-size models over the years, and boundary-pushing supermodel Winnie Harlow, who joined the competition with an autoimmune skin disorder known as vitiligo.

In the Netflix series' preview, Banks is shown further admitting that she "went too far" on *ANTM*, and later defends her vision for the show by telling the audience, "You guys were demanding it. So, we kept pushing more and more and more."

*Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model* debuts Feb. 16 on Netflix.**

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Published: January 29, 2026 at 05:57AM on Source: OPERA MAG

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