The Set-Up | EP 1

Hi, Curse Up listeners, I know you miss me on your feed. Don't worry. We're working on an all new season of Curse Of coming out later this year. In the meantime, if you can't stop thinking about the shocking stories you heard about America's Next Top Model, you'll definitely want to check out our new docuseries from E Dirty Rotten Scandals. In the series, you'll hear from the America's Next Top Model participants you heard from on Curse Of, and a few you didn't like former A and TM

Here with a defeatist attitude I don't have.

A bad attitude. Maybe I am angry inside.

I've been through stuff, so I'm angry, which is not anybody belot that's what is watching you.

But you're not bad on the surface. It's Tyra Banks finally losing her patients on a seemingly apathetic contestant named Tiffany Richardson. Tiffany had just been eliminated from the competition, and Tyra was disappointed in her attitude. But there's something deeper going on here. I've never in my life yolder the girl like this.

When my mother yells at this, it's because she loves me.

I was rooting for you.

We were all rooting for you. Out Damn you learn something from this.

It's become one of the most iconic moments in all of reality TV history, maybe in all of pop culture history. I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you. Those words have trans sended their context. They've become a meme and a catchphrase. That moment aired on April thirteenth, two thousand and five, just a few days short of my seventeenth birthday, and I was one of the five

If you were so rooting for her and saw her drowning, what did you help her?

I'm just clutching my pearls. Okay, at this point, it is ooh scary.

It's the same feeling that you get when your mom was cursing out your sibling.

There was a huge chunk that got cut out of that. Tyra got real personal with her and she hit her below the bell.

I cried every freaking episode.

I cried so much. I was just like, I'm not crying.

Them all gone, like I'm not.

Gonna beg to be here. People often wonder if that moment was staged, and while a lot of the stuff that happened on America's Next Top Model or ANTM was, according to everyone I spoke to and Tiffany Richardson herself, the I was rooting for you moment was not staged. That was real emotion and it's one of the few times we see Tyra's wiggslip, a moment where we see the real her.

You go to bed at night, you lay there and you take responsibility for yourself because nobody's gonna take responsibility for you. You rolling your eyes and because you've heard it all before. You've heard it all before. You don't know where the hell I come from. You have no idea what I've been through. But I'm not a victim. I grow from it and I learn take responsibility for yourself.

I've been looking into what happened on set that day, and I've talked to people from every part of the A and T and production, like Jose Torres. He was a sound mixer on the show for twenty seasons, and he was there during the we were Rooting for You moment.

Tyra took some mean shots, and a lot of it felt like she was personally invested in her. But she said some things to her about what are you going to do when you go back home and you're sleeping on that mattress again, when it's just you and your baby. You know, she got personal and she didn't need to, but I could see she was really pissed off.

For the past six months, I've interviewed dozens of contestants, producers, and crew members about their experiences on the show. I've been sent contracts and heard about dubious psyche valuations. I've been told about dangerous photoshoots and production standards that sound were like psychological experiments. I've heard about body shaming that caused lifelong trauma and edits that ruin people's careers. I wanted to know everything, from how this show got made

Robin was getting body shamed and age shamed the worst out of all of them.

And I just need to talk about some of the makeovers that still make me mad to this day. A and TM, especially in the early seasons, it's riddled with body shaming and misguided and ignorant views on sexuality and race. The things that didn't seem deep to us back then now seem deeply problematic. In every speaking engagement Tyra's done

Hell?

No, I say some dumb shit.

But I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together on the internet when there were twenty four cycles.

Of changing the world. Tyra's right, they did say some dumb shit. But here's the thing, even with my twenty twenty five sensibilities and maturity, when I rewatched America's Next Top Model, there's something about it that's still so good. There's a reason why it lasted for twenty first seasons, and why it's been adapted in fifty countries, why there are so many Reddit pages with thousands of posts dedicated to reliving A andtm's best moments, and why at its

It was really hard to not get in that headspace of being bitter towards the show because you spit me on as a winner. I won it rightfully so and now I'm having to look and be a million bucks, but I'm not making any money right now. I'm living on a couch from a makeup artist who extended their couch for me. Yet I'm famous.

And Cycle four finalist Kenya Hill, whose entire storyline on the show was about how much she ate. Kenya was thin, she just wasn't afraid to eat on camera, so producers decided a good storyline for her would be about her supposed overeating that caused her to gain weight uncontrollably, which wasn't true.

Even still to this day, I am mindful of is there anybody watching me eat right now? They believed what was portrayed on the show, and so that has actually been a struggle of just even eating in public.

I've heard a lot of disturbing stories and you will too as this season goes on. But out of all the criticisms and complaints, the contestants say, the biggest one is that the show was never really voting for them. That A ANDTM failed to deliver the one thing it repeatedly promised, a career in the high fashion modeling industry. In fact, only one contestant went on to achieve top model stardom that's anything close to Tyro's career, and that

Chantelle, here you are looking so beautiful, but we feel like all this beauty is being thrown away. The judges and social media are not happy with your photo.

After she was eliminated, Winnie went on to have a hugely successful career. She've walked the Victoria Secret Runway. She was in Beyonce's visual album Lemonade. She's been on the cover of Al Magazine, Harper's Bizarre, Vogue, Grease, Vogue India. She's that girl. But according to Winnie, A and TM didn't help her modeling career at all. Here she is on Watch What Happens Live. You were on America's Next Top Model.

You did great, but then you really broke through and here we are.

So I really started after the show because that really didn't do anything for my career, which it doesn't do anything for any model's career realistically. I went on because I thought like that was going to be a career starter, but it was really like a reality TV show. That's not what I signed up for. I mean, it is what she signed up for. She just thought she was

My booker was like, he loves you, but he cannot sign you and he can't work with you because of how you were portrayed.

Basically, they not messing with you. And I was so gutted because I was just like, why did I go on the show? Angelie was portrayed as a girl who'd left the hood, but couldn't quite get the hood to leave her. But when she came back for the All Star season, she'd had a glow up. It wasn't that her look had changed, it was the way she carried herself and the judges noticed. She was crowned the winner of A and TM All Stars, but she didn't keep that title long. A and TM stripped her of her

I did have an agent tell me she knew I was on America's Except Model and not as much as she loved my look and would have loved to sign into the agency. The agency unfortunately, does not typically affiliate themselves with girls who have been on the show. It's just really distracting for a lot of clients. And that you know, she was happy to meet me that unfortunately she couldn't sign me, and I was really bummed.

Out of course, for this show, I had to call Lisa Dematto. She's probably one of the most infamous contestants from ANTM because of her wild child antics, like the time she peeded in a diaper on the set of a photoshoot on cycle five. She's also known because to this day she still trashes ANTM every chance she gets. I couldn't get an agency.

They're like, we can't book you for anything.

The clients that I would normally see for like nutrient gene are crust or you.

Know, any type of catalog.

No one wanted to see me. After the show. They completely destroyed me. This is how a lot of contestants talk about Tyra and A and TM today, But I don't think it was Tyra's initial intention to ruin their careers. Coming up, we're going to dive into the origins of America's Next Top Model. When a young Tyra Banks came up with an idea to launch her second act, an idea that will propel want to be models into supermodel stardom.

I looked out the window and have this beautiful view, and it came to me. I was like, I want to do like an American idol book for models, but they lived together like the real world.

A modeling boot camp based on her early career, those scrappy years when she was just trying to become a supermodel, Tyra started modeling she was still a teenager. A girl at school came up to her and told her she had the right look.

She was a beautiful girl, and she was like, you know, you look like you should be a model, and mighty tell you you'd model. You ain't model, And I was like, what, you know, people stare at me, but not for that. And she kind of took me under her wing and taught me everything, and she started modeling, I think later in the ninth grade. She started kind of early, and then I started in the eleventh grade when I was fifteen.

And at first Tyra actually got rejected by a lot of agencies. But all you need is one yes, and she got that when she was seventeen, so she packed her bags and went to Paris alone. She went to casting after casting, walked runway after runway to make it to the top. And this was a time when there were very few black supermodels, and Tyra was no Gigi hided she didn't have the benefit of nepotism. She had to get it out the mud. Here's a CNN segment about her rise to fame.

Nineteen year old Tyra Banks uses her chameleon likability to change her attitude as often as she changes her clothes. One minute, she shined, demure, the next salty and sex sea. Tyra stands five feet eleven inches and especially in her way to international fame.

In the span of a decade, which is quite a long career for a model, Tyra became the first black woman to do the cover of GQ and Sports Illustrated, and she eventually went on to become one of the most recognizable Victoria's Secret Angels. But from the beginning, Tyra knew her modeling career was temporary. She was always planning her next big thing. Here she is at age nineteen.

I'd like to reach my peaking around twenty three or twenty four, like five years from now, I guess, and move on to something else.

What can you want to do besides modeling.

I'm going to film and television first media as an actress, to learn that side of the camera.

But that's not my main though.

I mean that's not what I want to do.

I want to be on the other side.

Account like writing for film and televisions.

And she made the first part happen. Tyra did TV appearances like this one where she played Wilsmith's homegirl Jackie on The Fresh Prince. That's it.

I didn't come all the way here from Philly.

You are not even gonna change. Oh my gosh. I remember that episode, and Tyra nailed it. She had a pretty significant role in the nineteen ninety five film Higher Learning. She was even in a Disney movie with Lindsay Lohan called Life Size, where she played a doll come to life. So by the early two thousands, Tyra was a household name, but she was also in her late twenties. And if there's anything A and TM taught me, it's that if you're over the age of twenty two, you might as

Because I'm not satisfied with just my career now. I mean, I always want more.

I always want to do more.

I never like just stop and get satisfied with something.

So that's when Tyra got her billion dollar idea, a show that would use her expertise in modeling and launched her career in TV. And just like she had to fight to make it on the Runway, Tyra had to fight to get a and TM made. When Tyra initially came up with the show, her agent told her it was a bad idea.

I had a lot of people tell me that this wasn't going to work, that models are unsympathetic characters. Actually is my agent. He told me models are unsympathetic characters. Nobody wants to see this.

I hope she fired that guy. But Tyra knew she had something special, so she kept telling people about her little reality show idea until she found someone who saw the vision, an established television producer named Ken Mock. A friend introduced Tyran. Ken, they had a two hour meeting and he was sold. They decided to be partners on

And we pitched it like I stood up because I knew who I wanted my cast to be. I walk and acted like miss Jay Honeycappache, I think you don't.

I did the whole thing for all of the networks.

I sure did acted out everybody.

They must have loved it.

They loved it.

Not everybody bought it, but they loved it.

Tyron's over the top antics started before she even had a deal. She was in those boardrooms putting on a one woman show. She literally acted out her dream cast and people loved it, but not enough to fund the show. That was until she met with an exec from CBS named Ken Maynard, who also told her it was a no for CBS, but he did think it could be good for a smaller network. He oversaw UPN UPN didn't

UPN and the WB really follow in the line of Fox Network in the nineties, where you have these new networks that realized that younger audiences, black audiences are a really safe bet in terms of getting eyeballs on the screens and on the programming.

Initially, UPN heard the pitch as a courtesy, but after meeting with Tyra, they realized she wasn't just a pretty face, she was an entertainer, and they decided to take a chance on the show. They greenlit it for one season. Tyra was a little disappointed at first. She envisioned her project on a more mainstream network, but to me, the

The why for me with this top Model show is because I want to expand the definition of beauty.

I want to kick to the curb.

This thing about this cookie cutter and you have to be six feet one hundred and twenty pounds, have.

Blonde hair, and you know like all that.

I was like, I want to kick that to the curb. That's funny because at least when it came to looks, the first two winners didn't exactly break the mold. They were both six feet tall, skinny, white women, they just weren't blonde, But that's a different conversation. For Tyra, getting the opportunity to bring this show to life overshadowed her disappointment of not being on CBS. Plus, she realized one of the perks of being a big fish in a

Legacy even called the godfather of reality TV. You produced making the band, which I think was the forerunner to all these singing audition programs that we have today. I did Pussycat Dolls Present and of course your most successful hit so far, America's Next Top Model.

Let's talk about Kim Mack's formula for making a good reality competition show. First, you find people who are desperate to attain something they couldn't otherwise get. Then you offer them that thing in a way that seems like a shortcut or a cheat code. Next, you turn on the cameras, and this is very important, you put them through embarrassing, stressful, and demeaning experiences in order to prove their worthiness for

The Big figure over it was Sean Poffstati Calms.

That's Amanda Kline, a reality TV historian and expert. Making the Band was like A and TM, but for music groups. The show was famous for making These young musicians performed demeaning task at Shawn Combe's request, like the iconic Cheesecake incident where Diddy asked the contestants to walk the six plus miles from Manhattan to Brooklyn to deliver him a piece of cheesecake from Juniors. The rumor is the cheesecake was actually for Beyonce, who was working with him in the studio.

Puffy just told us to go to the store in Brooklyn and bring about the cheesecake and walk as well.

Making the bitch not making back and tell them when you're doing it.

And God.

Here it was a task that had nothing to do with how well these people rapped or sank. It was about entertaining the audience. I don't know whose idea that was, but America's Next Top Model is also notorious for putting models in difficult and yes, sometimes demeaning and even dangerous situations that seemed to be strictly for our entertainment and had nothing to do with modeling. And that isn't the

It makes sense that ken Mock would kind of stick with that idea of a kingmaker. Tyra Banks has this eye right where she can pick out the model.

Now here's where we need need to talk about some disturbing coincidences. The first three seasons of making the band before it went to MTV and Diddy became the host, followed the journey to bring together train and launch a boy band called O Town. Their first music industry expert and guide was a man named Lou Pearlman. Hey, all you singers out there.

Lou Pearlman, the mastermind behind such bands as LFO in Sync of the Backstreet Boys.

As looking for five talented young men to form a new band.

Lou Pearlman made his name by launching and managing some of the most successful boy bands in the nineties and two thousands. He died in prison in disgrace in twenty sixteen after being convicted of running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in US history. He was also accused by

Ditty stopped pumping on the radio.

Now you because you just don't want to know what you was done. We made one record with you money to out of respect. It's ten years later, and you showed got half about publishing. That wasn't all. Diddy was literally on trial for shooting someone in the nightclub in nineteen ninety nine. He was acquitted, but the rapper who was convicted, who was also signed to Bad Boy, has strongly implied that he took the fall for Ditty and Lou. Pearlman's affinity for three sixty deals was well known in

Lou really thought he was just entitled to all of this. You know, if it was idea, you know, to do this, and he introduced you to this person to get you that record deal. Then yeah, he was entitled in ninety percent of your business because if it wasn't for him, he'd be nothing. So you want ten percent or nothing.

That was all out in the open before either of them was hired on making band, So even if the show's producers didn't know about the more serious allegations, they seem to have turned a blind eye to the allegedly unethical business practices making the band. Worked with the con artists because he made good TV. Then they worked with a guy who was accused of shooting someone and cheating his artists because he made better TV. Now I'm not saying Tyra was on the same level as Ditty or

Do you really think he can have a cover bell contract with the gap in your room?

Yes?

Why not?

This is all people say Israel's beautiful cover girl.

She felt twice. I was like, oh my gosh.

You're trying to be so sexy and so girly and you.

Look like a man in a dress.

Girl. Now. I never thought I'd be mentioning Tyra Banks's name next to these two criminals, But her legacy is tied together with Ken mox and the shady early days of reality TV. And Ken wasn't just an EP on paper. He was there calling the shots on set Harri's former a and tm soal mixer Jose Torres.

Any of the major events that happened on that show, they did not happen without Ki approval, without his say so good or bad. If anything happened on that show, Ken Mock.

Signed off Tyra could not have made this show without her co pilot Ken Mock. Sure, they were just a production team making another reality show when Reality TV was still in its Wild Wild West era. But what I've heard from models over and over is that America's Next Top Model took advantage of their dreams, and the models who were on the earlier seasons had no idea what this show really was. There's something kind of cruel about

America's Next Top Model is about dreams, plain and simple, and it's about accomplishing these dreams through hard work and talent and passion. I worked my boat off to get to the top of the modeling industry, so I know exactly what.

It takes to make the star.

Tyra wanted us to believe she was wholeheartedly invested in making these contestants dreams come true.

I was rooting for you, We're all rooting for you out damn you.

But after talking to the models and the people behind the scenes, I'm not too sure. On this season, you're going to hear from A ANDTM fans and critics, the show's producers, and of course the models themselves. Being on America's Next Top Model actually saved my life.

Did they even know that I was in debt after the show?

They just kept focusing on me being suicidal. To try to figure out if A and TM was really cursed and what that means for the models, judges, Tyra, and us the audience. On the next episode, We're going back to where it all began. Cycle one, a season that looked like it was shot on a camcorder, yet somehow launched a global franchise. We'll meet the very first contestants, revisit the chaotic production, and uncover how A and TM deceived us and the contestants. Right from the start.

Tyra Banks did not follow through on any of the winnings.

Thanks for listening to the Curse of America's Next Top Model. We really appreciate the support. We'd love for you to really show your support by subscribing to our show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to leave us a five star rating and review. If you love the show, tell your group, chat, your co workers, your friends, your mama to check us out. And if you don't, maybe keep that one to yourself. Thanks again to all of our listeners.