"They built a whole empire...off the backs of every girl’s dream that did that show."

"When I went on that show, I knew people would be against anything I represent, being a Black woman that’s gay or whatever it is. But I did think that I would be protected," Ebony says. "I hoped at least they’d pull me to the side and say, 'How do you wanna approach this?' They forgot the danger of that."

Ebony adds that when she unexpectedly got a call from Tyra later that day — after barely having spoken to her previously — she thought that Tyra might want to address the botched makeover and help her. But, Ebony says, Tyra instead told her, "The judges have been talking to me, and they’ve been saying that you have been showing up ashy every day."

Ebony says she was "blown away" by the call from Tyra and started to question whether she was being treated differently because she was Black. She also felt like she couldn't speak up or share how she was feeling. "There’s nothing I can do that’s going to make it better. Whatever narrative they’re creating, they’re gonna do this...I realized that Tyra and the judges aren’t gonna help me."

Shandi calls out producers for not putting a stop to what happened to her and instead filming everything, even setting up a scene the next day where Tyra coaxed the story out of Shandi and framed her as in the wrong. They also refused to let her leave when she wanted to, and only agreed to her being able to call her boyfriend, Eric, if they could film it. They also made her go to the doctor as well as talk to the male model involved — all on camera.

Later, Tyra invited Shandi and other contestants for a reunion on her talk show The Tyra Banks Show, and aired footage of the incident for Shandi to react to on camera, despite Shandi having told Tyra she had never watched it and never wanted to.

Executive producer Ken Mok says they treated the show as a "documentary," and adds, "I will tell you this. When I went into post and saw the footage, we scaled back that scene in a significant way. That was, for good or bad, one of the most memorable moments in Top Model."

Meanwhile, Shandi says, "After the show, I felt really broken." 

Keenyah says her weight and how much she ate became a storyline on the show, with producers even editing clips to make it seem like she was eating more than she was — something she said was "damaging." They also made her act out the role of "Gluttony" during a seven deadly sins photoshoot, which she thought was coincidental at first — until the next photoshoot, when they made the contestants model as animals and assigned Keenyah an elephant.

"I later found out that there are women who developed eating disorders from comparing themselves to what I was looking like and what the judges were saying," Keenyah adds. "There’s some level of responsibility to the viewer knowing that there are so many young women watching this show. There is an insensitivity towards what it would do to their self-confidence."

Keenyah says she asked herself, "What would Tyra do?" And believed the answer was to "politely and professionally" stop the shoot and let everyone know she was uncomfortable. "So that’s exactly what I did," she says. "I didn’t get the response that I thought I was going to get. The looks on their faces were just like, 'How dare you stop our production?' To be on a TV set in front of so many people and still not be protected is some pretty dark stuff." 

Keenyah adds that what made the whole experience worse was that the photo from the shoot that was chosen as her "best shot" was one where Bertini was grabbing her leg. "It’s wild that that got past however many people it got past."

Tyra says she has apologized to Dani, claiming she was "between a rock and a hard place." "There were agents that would tell me, 'She will not work with those teeth,'" Tyra says. "I could have just been quiet and let them handle it. Hindsight is 20/20 for all of us. It just so happens that a lot of things that are 20/20 for me happened in front of the world.”

"Bull-fucking-shit," Dani responds. "Me getting my gap closed is not opening any doors for me. You knew what you were doing for the show. You were making good TV at my expense."

Dani describes how the agency she was signed to as part of her prize treated her coldly and never sent her to castings, even telling another model, "We have to treat Dani different because she came from Top Model."

"That was a hard, hard pill to swallow," Dani says. "What I was told was that no one wanted to book me for their shows because I was viewed as this reality star. ... I was never able to rise to the level that I could have or should have."

"Don’t see me and my suffering and just walk past me. That’s so fucked up. They built a whole empire — a multi-million dollar brand — known as America’s Next Top Model off the backs of every girl’s dream that did that show, and it never became realised."

"I was young and kind of just along for the ride, but I had to sign a separate release right then and there," she says. "Couldn’t talk to my mom about it. Couldn’t call a lawyer or anything like that."

"I take full responsibility for that shoot," he says. "I look back now and I think it was a celebration of violence. It was crazy. That one I look back and I’m like, you were an idiot."