We always knew that a tell-all documentary about America's Next Top Model wasn't going to be pretty. But the Shandi Sullivan storyline from cycle two was particularly harrowing.
We'd all seen the memes, the makeovers, the questionable photoshoots and the Gladiator-level runway challenges. And given that the show hit its peak in the mid-to-late noughties, we weren't under any illusions that Tyra Banks' attempt to democratise the modelling industry via reality TV would be particularly inclusive, either. At best, ANTM could be written off as simply a product of its time. At worst, it could be blamed for perpetuating the worst elements of a 2000s celebrity culture that preyed on vulnerable women.
Watch Netflix's new docuseries Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model and you'll probably lean towards the latter. But no ANTM contestant's story has been quite as troubling as Shandi Sullivan's.
What was initially framed as a cheating scandal when her season first aired has now been explored in a different light – and to make matters worse, the ANTM producers don't appear to show any remorse. Read on to find out what happened.
Shandi Sullivan was brought on as the dark horse of her season, an unassuming girl from Kansas City who worked in Walgreens and was hopelessly devoted to her boyfriend, Eric. At 21, she was noticeably less confident than many of the other contestants, having been encouraged to attend the open call audition at the Missouri Mall by Eric. A month later, she was on the show and being given her Top Model makeover, swapping her brown hair for glossy, golden locks.
Sullivan defied expectations and made it to the final four contestants, who were flown to Milan for the season's last few challenges. It was her first time out of the country and, after a photoshoot featuring male models, the show's producers organised a small party at the girls' house with some of the Italian men. Sullivan estimates that she had two bottles of wine to herself before they were all encouraged to get in the hot tub. From that point on, she remembers a distressing experience. The cameras were rolling the whole time.
“No one did anything to stop it. And it all got filmed, all of it. Every moment of it,” she remembers in the documentary. “I didn’t even feel sex happening, I just knew it was happening. And then I passed out." The incident was framed as a cheating scandal, as though Sullivan had intentionally betrayed her boyfriend back home. And the camera crew captured every stage of her humiliation in detail, from her phone call with Eric to explain what had happened to her visit to a doctor for a sexual health check-up.
Then, in a later scene, Tyra Banks used the incident to deliver a lecture about how the models “have to fight against [their] carnal desires”, specifically highlighting Sullivan. “Everybody messes up, Shandi. I’m not judging you,” said Banks in the scene. “I understand that people do become attracted to other people."
Reflecting on this particularly disturbing moment in ANTM's history, the show's Executive Producer, Kevin Mok, defends its inclusion by claiming they were trying to replicate a documentary dynamic on set. “On day one, we told [the girls] there’s going to be cameras with you 24/7, day in and day out, and they’re going to cover everything,” he says in the Netflix documentary. “I will tell you this. When I went into post, and I saw the footage, we scaled back that scene in a significant way. That was, for good or bad, one of the most memorable moments of Top Model.”
And as for Banks? In what quickly becomes a familiar tactic in Netflix's documentary, she shifted the blame. “I do remember her story. It’s a little difficult for me to talk about production, because that’s not my territory.”
After finishing in third place, Sullivan moved back to Kansas City and returned to her job at Walgreens. She and Eric tried to make things work, but their relationship couldn't weather the pressure of having their personal lives turned into a plot line for national TV. “I’d be walking with Eric down the street, and somebody would recognise me and call me a slut to my face,” she says in the documentary. “It made me hate myself.”
Now 43, Sullivan has put her modelling days behind her and is living a quieter life in Brooklyn, New York. She's now the proud owner of a jewellery business, Dream Meow Corner, and hosts a horror film podcast, Urn Fulla Popcorn. But her ultimate dream is to live a simpler life on a farm, where the self-professed cat lady can look after animals in peace – way better than walking a catwalk in heels.
The patriarchal grip on beauty standards is stronger than ever.
