Adrianne Curry Blames Viewers, Not Tyra Banks for America’s Next Top Model Toxicity

She also got a surprised reaction from Bethenny Frankel, while appearing as a guest on her Just B podcast earlier this week, when she told her, “I was the only winner that won no money. Zero dollars.”

The model went on to explain, “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 their coverage of the interview, People notes that Curry told Entertainment Weekly in 2023 that she did receive $15,000 from Revlon after her 2003 win, as well as a contract with Wilhelmina models. However, in a 2017 blog post, she said that Wilhelmina dumped her after the show switched to IMG for Season 2 — the new owner’s company was skeptical this happened in a 2023 statement to EW.

Talking with Frankel this week, Curry said that Banks told the cast the winner was “gonna be this huge Revlon like superstar.” She said, “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.”

Curry added, “I always joke because people are like, ‘You still call yourself America’s Next Top Model?’ I’m like, ‘It’s the only f–king thing I won. I’m gonna put it on my tombstone.'”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Frankel asked Curry about the so-called “reality reckoning” of 2020, that saw the treatment of contestants on several reality shows called into question. It was at this time that Banks publicly apologized after some of her own past comments to contestants resurfaced on social media.

“Been seeing the posts about the insensitivity of some past ‘ANTM’ moments and I agree with you,” Banks posted in May of that year. “Looking back, those were some really off choices. Appreciate your honest feedback and am sending so much love and virtual hugs.”

As for Curry, she didn’t see it the same as many fans at the time: “Everyone wanted me to dog pile on Tyra Banks when 2020 was happening and everyone was getting pissed, 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–t anymore.”

“What she taught me was the truth of entertainment,” Curry said of that first season that made her a star. “It’s cutthroat. You can’t trust everybody and everyone is lying to you.”

It’s certainly a brutal lesson, but Curry said it was “a great lesson” to learn so early in her career. She also understood what the show was for Banks, noting it “was just an avenue for her to propel herself into something else after she aged out at modeling.”

“I see that now,” she said, adding, “And if I can let it go, everyone else can.”

You can read Banks’ more recent comments about her ANTM legacy here.

While Curry is able to reflect on her reality television start and offer some grace to Banks, she’s got far less grace in hand for the fourth or fifth judge of any reality show: the audience.

“It was funny because everyone’s like, ‘Oh, she did this, she did that,'” Curry said, referring to Banks. “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.'”

It’s the idea that television — and reality television, in particular — is just about giving the audience more and more of what they want. Frankel said she feels a similar sentiment when it comes to Real Housewives viewers.

But times have changed in the past 20 years, with Curry talking about how it’s even impacted the modeling industry. When she started, she said she was always told “that I need to tone it the f–k down, that it’s not about me or who I am. Just shut the f–k up and do my job.”

That restriction of her identity and personality is part of what pushed her into reality television. Just 2 years after her ANTM win, Curry would appear on Season 4 of The Surreal Life.

“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,” she told Frankel.

Since then, though, reality television has evolved and social media has taken over everything. Now, Curry says the modeling industry — like so much of the entertainment and arts — is about influencers and is “personality-driven.”