Adrianne Curry Blames Viewers, Not Tyra Banks, for Toxicity of Top Model

Adrianne Curry is opening up about her experience on America’s Next Top Model.

Curry, who was the very first winner of the modeling reality competition series in 2003, talked about her experience on the June 3 episode of Just B with Bethenny Frankel.

“My season of Top Model, I was the only winner that won no money. Zero dollars,” Curry, now 42, said.

Frankel, 54, was surprised. “There was no money in my win. I got a title,” Curry said. Curry claimed that during filming the contestants were promised a campaign with Revlon, but that promise was edited out before it aired. (In a 2023 story for EW, she did say she earned $15,000 from the brand.) She did win a contract with Wilhelmina models, but claimed in a 2017 blog post that Wilhelmina was angry the show switched to IMG for season 2 and no longer worked with her.

In a statement to EW in 2023, Wilhelmina VP Ray Lata said, “Twenty years ago, Wilhelmina had different owners and staff. Wilhelmina is now a public company. It seems unlikely there would be sufficient motivation to harm Tyra and not try to maximize a model’s earning potential.”

Of the prizes, Curry continued, “[Banks] was telling us we’re gonna be this huge Revlon like superstar because I don’t think any of us would have fought as hard as we did for what the prize really was, which is the title. So I always joke because people are like, ‘You still call yourself America’s Next Top Model?’ I’m like, it’s the only f—— thing I won. I’m gonna put it on my tombstone.”

Frankel asked if Curry felt tempted to speak out about Banks, 51, during her “reality reckoning.” But Curry said that when backlash toward Banks and the series bloomed online in 2020 (in part thanks to footage from a “race swapping challenge”) she didn’t take part. 

“You know what’s really funny is everyone wanted me to dog pile on Tyra Banks when 2020 was happening and everyone was getting pissed,” she said. “And I was like, no, because if anyone has a right to be mad at her, it’s me. And I’m over it. I don’t give a s— anymore. What she taught me was the truth of entertainment.”

“It’s cutthroat,” she said. “You can’t trust everybody and everyone is lying to you. So she actually gave me a great lesson, and the show was just an avenue for her to propel herself into something else after she aged out at modeling. I see that now. And if I can let it go, everyone else can.”

But there is someone who Curry thinks hasn’t taken responsibility: the audience at home. “It was funny because everyone’s like, ‘Oh, she did this, she did that.’ But then I would look at the people who watch the show, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, but you watched it. You made it popular. It’s your fault too,’ ” she said. Frankel, a reality veteran, agreed and said she felt similarly about Real Housewives viewers.

Later in the episode, Curry reflected on how modeling has changed since she first got into the industry more than 20 years ago. “I was told in modeling that I need to tone it the f— down, that it’s not about me or who I am. Just shut the f— up and do my job. And that’s when I went into more reality TV, and I went and did The Surreal Life because I was like, fine. I’ll go make money being who I am since you people think I need to shut the eff up and stop being me.” Curry appeared on season 4 of The Surreal Life in 2005. 

Now, Curry said, modeling is all “influencers” and more “personality-driven,” and her personality wouldn’t be a problem.

Banks addressed backlash to America’s Next Top Model at the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Awards on Feb. 27, where she was the first-ever Luminary Spotlight honoree.

“Over 20 years ago I created a show called America’s Next Top Model,” Banks began. “And you guys have no idea how hard we fought to bring the diversity to that television show at a time when it didn’t exist; to show different beauties at a time when the world was like, ‘What? You casting that?’ A time when people in the fashion industry were telling me, ‘You putting the girls from the hood on your show?’ “

“I was like, ‘Why can the girl from the trailer park become a supermodel but the girl that’s chilin’ in the park in the hood can’t?’ “ she said. “And we fought and we struggled and we made it happen.”

“Did we get it right? Hell no. I said some dumb s—,” she said, seemingly addressing some of the backlash. “But I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together on the Internet when there were 24 cycles of changing the world. And I am so excited that I, and so many of us, have opened that door for others to follow.”

America’s Next Top Model ran from 2003 to 2018. In May, Entertainment Weekly reported that Banks will be interviewed for an upcoming Netflix documentary about the series.