When America’s Subsequent Prime Mannequin premiered in 2002, it was a juggernaut. The present was part of a cohort of programming that constructed the foundations of actuality tv as we all know it immediately. A brand new documentary, Actuality Test: Inside America’s Subsequent Prime Mannequin, asks the present’s creator, Tyra Banks, her collaborators, and former contestants to look again at a few of the largest moments within the present’s historical past and reckon with its legacy.
Greater than 20 years after the present first aired, viewers have discovered many components of the present didn’t age effectively. In that point, our requirements round actuality tv have absolutely modified. So, ought to we be evaluating the present by way of a 2026 lens?
Scaachi Koul, a tradition author for Slate, spoke with At present, Defined host Noel King about how a lot accountability we are able to anticipate from folks like Banks and what a present like America’s Subsequent Prime Mannequin tells us about ourselves. An excerpt of their dialog, edited for size and readability, is under.
There’s rather more within the full podcast, so hearken to At present, Defined wherever you get your podcasts, together with Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Inform me why we’re speaking about America’s Subsequent Prime Mannequin once more?
Tradition strikes in 20- to 30-year cycles. And so there’s at all times nostalgia that comes up with these items. That could be a present that premiered proper after 9/11. It speaks to a really specific slice of early to mid-aughts actuality present tradition.
We’re in a part the place we’re rethinking all of these issues. It’s an fascinating time to reassess the tradition that continues to dominate. The entire issues we watch, they’re all guided by these actuality reveals from 2000 to 2010.
What was America’s Subsequent Prime Mannequin?
It was a actuality competitors present. They’d deliver on a bunch of youngsters and younger girls. They’d get these women, they put them in a home collectively, and so they must do these modeling competitions each week.
The present created an entire lexicon for us that we didn’t have earlier than. It was such an odd fever dream of a present. It’s precisely like quite a lot of actuality competitors nonetheless, but it surely was so particular and bizarre and saliently, helmed by a lunatic.
Tyra [Banks] was cuckoo bananas, and that’s why we beloved her. She was wonderful TV. She was at all times making an attempt to trick the ladies. There’s one the place she pretends to faint in entrance of them. After which they put it within the present.
A lot of what the documentary has to grapple with, finally, is what was occurring on that present was sheer lunacy. And a few of what went on within the present is on reflection somewhat appalling.
Let’s discuss by way of a few of the issues that the documentary tries to deal with, and I wish to begin with a mannequin named Shandi.
Shandi has possibly essentially the most devastating story within the documentary. She was somebody that I nonetheless remembered. She was on the second season of the present. She appeared primed to win, in truth.
Close to the top of the present, they take all of the fashions to Milan and whereas she was there, she obtained actually drunk and there have been a bunch of male fashions. And within the present’s model, while you watch it in actual time, it’s like a drunken hookup. She cheats on her boyfriend in Milan and that’s the way it’s framed. And her disgrace is, I can’t consider I did this to my boyfriend.
Once you watch the documentary, it’s recast not — I wouldn’t even say it’s a 2026 lens. I don’t essentially assume that it’s. I feel lots of people nonetheless view sexual assault like this and nonetheless view ingesting and girls like this, however she’s an grownup, and so now actually, in her maturity, she’s in a position to take a look at this and be like, yeah, that wasn’t a spot the place I might consent.
Is anybody held to account for the best way Shandi was handled?
Lots of people need extra accountability from Tyra, and I get that she’s the face of it and an excellent individual to ask, however these reveals are constellations of individuals. There’s lots of people who work on these reveals and there’s lots of people who’ve accountability for it, and a few of them are within the doc and possibly a few of them aren’t.
What occurred with Shandi is there’s 5, six, 10 individuals who need to say okay to that. And you retain saying it and you retain saying it. That’s what’s fascinating to me, how the machine lets that cross.
There was a mannequin, Dani, who had an exquisite, charming, pleasant hole in her entrance enamel. And she or he was made to shut it. Inform me about how the documentary offers with younger girls being advised one thing distinct about you will not be proper, it’s not adequate.
It’s a tricky gig that Tyra gave herself as a result of she’s making an attempt to inform these girls, that is how the business works and these are the issues you might want to do to have the ability to thrive in it. On the identical time, she’s propagating those self same issues.
I believed her and I nonetheless consider her when she would say, you might want to drop pounds since you’re not going to get a canopy woman marketing campaign should you’re larger. Which was true on the time. It’s nonetheless true for lots of campaigns.
Tyra says, “That is what I knew with the data that I had.” I form of consider her. The present was nonetheless focused on transferring that narrative ahead and ensuring that was the stress. The purpose of the present was the stress between who you had been and who you might be alleged to change into.
You watched the documentary. What did you wish to get out of it and what do you’re feeling such as you obtained out of it? Did it really feel like an trustworthy reckoning?
Intent and outcome are at all times totally different. And I don’t know what the intent was, however I feel with the outcome, she comes off trying like what we knew her to be, which is fairly craven, and fairly conscious of what she’s finished, and never that sorry.
That’s what we purchased. And the concept she goes to be this font of accountability — I don’t assume that’s probably. Quite a lot of her solutions are like, “Effectively, that was the time.” That’s at all times the argument folks make.
I by no means actually get that in hindsight, as a result of it’s nonetheless the time. The president is posting gifs or AI movies of the one and solely Black president we’ve had as a monkey. So I don’t really know that it’s of a time. It’s simply of a unique place.
That form of stuff doesn’t stay in actuality TV prefer it used to, but it surely permeated in all places else and it has at all times been there. [Banks] was responding to what she had, however we’re at all times responding to what we now have and we at all times have this.
It really has by no means actually improved. At some point we get to resolve if we’d like to enhance it. I feel these retrospectives are worthwhile as a result of they assist us see how the Overton window has moved and the place it’s moved, and the way we are able to possibly shift it again.
