Curry hit back at media coverage of her comments about the &34;woke lens&34; of &34;Top Model&34; criticism: &34;All the stuff you got mad about was just content creation.&34; America's Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry compares Tyra Banks show to 'modeling Holocaust' Curry hit back at media coverage of her comments about the &34;woke lens&34; of &34;Top Model&34; criticism: &34;All the stuff you got mad about was just content creation.&34; :maxbytes(150000):stripicc()/JoeyNolfiauthorphotoba4923fec03a4027868306485696ef41.jpg) Joey Nolfi is a senior writer at .

Curry hit back at media coverage of her comments about the "woke lens" of "Top Model" criticism: "All the stuff you got mad about was just content creation."

America's Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry compares Tyra Banks show to 'modeling Holocaust'

Curry hit back at media coverage of her comments about the "woke lens" of "Top Model" criticism: "All the stuff you got mad about was just content creation."

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 28, 2026 11:45 a.m. ET

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Adrianne Curry on 'ANTM' cycle 1; Tyra Banks on 'ANTM'. Credit:

- *ANTM* winner Adrianne Curry slammed media coverage of her "woke lens" comments about the Tyra Banks modeling competition.

- The star went on a social media tirade, saying she doesn't "trust producers" and turned down invitations to appear in *ANTM* documentaries.

- Curry compared the show to a "modeling Holocaust" because she "lost so much weight."**

*America's Next Top Model* winner Adrianne Curry has compared the Tyra Banks-fronted modeling competition series to the "modeling Holocaust" in a new social media tirade.

Amid news of **'s exclusive debut of a new Netflix docuseries that's set to examine the show's problematic history, Curry criticized earlier this week what she called the "woke lens" of fan analysis for *ANTM* in the modern era. In response to media coverage reporting on her comments, the 43-year-old *My Fair Brady* reality star hosted a lengthy live video Wednesday on X, where she covered topics ranging from her time on *ANTM* to pushing back against those lamenting the shooting death of Alex Pretti in Minnesota.

During the live video, Curry, now a successful Avon sales representative, drifted in and out of both defending and criticizing *Top Model*, and at one point said of the show's production: "I feel like I went through the modeling Holocaust" due to the changes her body went through while filming the show's inaugural 2003 season for UPN.

'ANTM' winner Adrianne Curry and Tyra Banks in 2023.

Frederick M. Brown/Getty

"I lost so much weight," Curry said, adding that her grandmother commented that she "looked like a skeleton" when she returned home from making the show, because she "lost an a--load of weight because we never ate" on set.

Curry also took aim at those who criticized her for using the word "woke" to describe the "lens" through which younger audiences view and critique *Top Model'*s approach to what many have alleged was exploitative reality TV practices in the early aughts — including photo challenges that tasked models with darkening their skin to portray different races, as well as body-shaming comments from the show's panel of judges.

"What would you call the lens people look at everything today?" Curry asked during the live, referencing her earlier commentary on Netflix's *Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model,* which she said she declined participation in because she still doesn't trust reality TV producers. "Is it f---ing annoying a--hole lens? Is it pearl-clutching, anal retentive, I have nothing better to do with my life lens? Someone educate me on what we call the struggle sessions that people try to put others through today, 20-plus years later after they've done something."

'ANTM' star Ambreal Williams says Tyra Banks 'ran off the stage' when Ebony Morgan quit

'ANTM' alum alleges 'hostile' Jay Manuel 'didn't get along with anybody' on Tyra Banks show

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter*.****

Curry then mocked the show's critics, telling her followers that "no one was virtue signaling" at the time of *ANTM*'s debut.

"This whole, 'I'm so self-righteous, I want to cancel someone from 2003,' what the f--- is your problem? What do you call that, if not woke?" Curry asked, before admitting, "We change the meaning of everything. 'Gay,' to me, meant 'lame' in the '90s," later adding, "Nobody meant homosexual, not f---ing one of us" at the time.

"Okay, I guess I can't say things are 'gay' meaning 'lame' and not 'gay' anymore," she concluded.

Echoing a sentiment that Banks herself expressed in the *Reality Check* trailer regarding audience interest in watching intense on-camera material, Curry elaborated on her complex thoughts on *ANTM*.

The cast of 'America's Next Top Model' cycle 1, including winner Adrianne Curry.

"Here's the other thing. Everyone wants to get mad at Tyra Banks. Where the f--- were your parents, if you're eight years old watching a f---ing show full of full-grown women being a--holes to each other? Tyra Banks wasn't your mommy. Where were your parents?" Curry asked. "They just sat you in front of the TV and didn't give a s--- what you were watching? And now you want to get mad at all the producers? Where the f--- were your parents? I mean, you know, that's their responsibility."

Curry then said that "it makes sense if the girls are still peeved" about their alleged treatment on the program, but urged them to let it go over what she labeled a "statute of limitations" on complaining "now that we know what reality TV is."

"Back then," she observed, "we didn't — especially season 1, we had no idea. Once we hit season 3, didn't you f---ing get it? It wasn't a reality show about making models, it was a f---ing meat grinder for content."

The former model and reality TV star then expressed confusion over reporting on her initial reveal that she declined participation in *Reality Check*, despite Banks and former judges Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, Miss J. Alexander, and multiple other contestants (including Curry's cycle 1 cast mates Shannon Stewart and Giselle Samson) sitting for interviews for the upcoming project.

"I don't understand why I'm the bad guy. I look at it this way. I've been f---ed over by producers so many times. I've worked in post-production where I watched in real time behind the scenes how they manipulate and film to make it look like people said and did things they f---ing didn't. It is nefarious, it's evil, it's bad. So, I actually quit working behind the scenes," Curry said, after telling her viewers that she she worked as a crew member on VH1's short-lived 2009 reality show *My Antonio* starring Antonio Sabàto Jr. "I sat there in editing bays, we'd do story boards with story arcs, production's job is how to make the contestants look as f---ing stupid as possible to get tons of money and get people to watch."

Curry later doubled down on a point she's made in the past, stating, "Welcome to f---ing Hollywood. That's what these people do."

"I'm grateful for everything I did get. I don't have hate in my heart. I'm not blaming the show," she said. "It was a crazy experience and it taught me so much."

Though she hasn't appeared in any of the documentary-style examinations of *ANTM* history (including other recent projects from VICE and ABC News), Curry agreed to be interviewed by EW alongside 13 other contestants in 2023, for an article highlighting the show's most shocking moments for its 20th anniversary.

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

During that interview, Curry touched on everything from being assaulted by a stranger on the streets of Paris during filming, to alleging that she never received the full prize package the judges promised her throughout the competition.

"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 said at the time, noting that the experience made her feel "f---ing humiliated" — though, she said she was paid about $15,000 to do it. Still, that was a far cry, she said, from the "huge Revlon models" Banks and the judges indicated contestants would become.

Prior to Netflix's *Reality Check*, Banks lightly addressed fan pushback against the program, including the aforementioned challenges that tasked models with portraying women of different races.

"I want to be very clear: I, in no way, put my 'Top Models' in blackface. I'm a Black woman. I am proud. I love my people and the struggle that we have gone through continues, and the last thing that I would ever do is be a part of something that degraded my race," the supermodel said in a past statement. "I'm sorry to anybody that watched *Top Model* and was offended by the pictures because they didn't understand the real story behind them or even if you did see the whole episode and you were still offended, I truly apologize because that is not my intention. My intention is to spread beauty and break down barriers."

Nigel Barker returns to speak about 'ANTM' in 'Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model'.

Banks gave an emphatic defense of *Top Model* on stage at the 2025 *Essence* Black Women in Hollywood Awards, where she told the audience 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 went against industry trends at the time, including but not limited to cycle 11's trans model Isis King, cycle 12's Tahlia Brookins, who had scars on her body, and several plus-size models over the years.

EW has reached out to producers Ken Mok and Laura Fuest Silva for comment on the show many times over the years, though Mok has only provided one on-record statement regarding the numerous allegations from past contestants: "As this story has been reported on numerous times over the last 20 years, I have nothing left to add except that I have nothing but respect for everyone who has appeared on the show," he told EW through a representative in 2023. "I wish all of them nothing but health and happiness in their future endeavors."

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

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Published: January 29, 2026 at 02:00AM on Source: PRIME TIME

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