By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — Is Tyra Banks the villain? It depends on whom you ask.
A new Netflix docuseries has reopened the wounds of “America’s Next Top Model,” the popular reality show that began by promising young women a chance at a real modeling career and ended as a meme machine for its problematic photo shoots and judging.
Over three episodes, Banks, former contestants and other judges, including the photographer Nigel Barker, look back at the show, which ran from 2003 to 2018. Some slam Banks, while Banks herself seeks to set the record straight from her perspective. And then there is Barker, who tries, as he did on the original show, to walk a balanced line.
“Were there mistakes? Yeah. Lots. Was Tyra responsible for all of them? No, of course not,” Barker told CNN last week, ahead of the Monday release of “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.” “But was she a part of it? Yes.”
“But, also,” he added, “when a woman is the head of something and a businesswoman, people often condemn women in different ways than they would if a man had done things.”
Banks already had a lucrative career as a model when she created the reality show featuring young women going through a series of challenges to win the title of “top model,” which included a contract with a major agency. Banks also hosted and executive produced the program.
With its fixation on high fashion, thinness and proximity to celebrity, “America’s Next Top Model” mirrored the times in which it aired and became a cultural phenomenon. The show gained a new life during the pandemic, becoming popular among some who weren’t even born when it debuted.
As the years went on, many challenges were increasingly viewed with derision, including a photo shoot in which contestants were made up to be different races and another in which a contestant whose mother had been shot and paralyzed was made to pose as a gunshot victim. Contestants were often criticized for their weight.
Barker served as a photographer and judge for 18 seasons of the show before he and his friends “the two Jays” — runway coach and judge J. Alexander, also known as Miss J, and creative director and judge Jay Manuel, also known as Mr. Jay — were let go in 2012.
These days, while he doesn’t dismiss the criticism of the show, he also sees another perspective.
“A lot of times people weren’t talking about, say, petite models. They weren’t talking about plus size models. They weren’t talking about models of color, but Tyra did and brought those subjects up,” Barker told CNN. “Very touchy, very difficult subjects to talk about. And as a result, people talked about them and they got out in the open air, and then we kind of made decisions and said, oh, that was terrible.”
Though time has put some of how those discussions unfolded under a new microscope, Barker said he is proud to point out that “no one was talking about it until we did it.”
“And so I hope that some of that comes through too, and that there is compassion on all sides and reason on all sides,” he said.
In the dark
The contents of the three-episode docuseries, which Barker saw in its entirety prior to its debut, surprised even him in some cases.
One case involves Shandi Sullivan, a contestant on cycle 2, as the seasons are called. When the show initially aired, one episode featured a scene in which Sullivan was presented as having had sex with a man she met during a trip to Milan with her fellow contestants. Others witnessed the incident, which took place in the presence of the film crew. When the show aired, Sullivan was presented as distraught after realizing she’d cheated on her boyfriend back home.
In the docuseries, Sullivan reveals she was inebriated and could not have consented to having sex with the man, whom she had met while filming, as he and others ha