During her appearance on the Tamron Hall Show on Wednesday, model Tyra Banks admitted that during her time with America’s Next Top Model, there were “a whole bunch of things” that she and other members of the team got wrong in terms of diversity and inclusion on the modeling competition show.
“We were still operating in a world — I was still a model at the time, not a retired model yet, and still operating in this world that had so many rules,” Banks revealed to Hall when asked about the public scrutiny she faced for her work on the series. “It was this awful push and pull that we all had.”
The 46-year-old said that many of the mistakes took place due to her trying to balance breaking boundaries and ensuring that the contestants would have flourishing careers after the cameras stopped rolling.
“I was trying to push boundaries but was also torn to try to make sure that these girls could work, so it was a balance. It was like, ‘Oh, break beauty barriers,’ but yeah, I can break them all I want on the show, but they’ll graduate from the show, and they won’t work.”
The “Life-Size” actress has been criticized over the years on social media for the way that she often harshly criticized contestants on the show. One viral clip from a 2006 episode of the series shows Banks questioning cycle six winner Danielle Evans’ decision not to undergo a dental procedure to close a gap.
“Do you really think you can have a CoverGirl contract with a gap in your mouth?” the ANTM creator and executive producer asked Evans. Banks apologized on Twitter for the resurfaced clip and explained that model execs working with the show were in her ear telling her what needed to be changed about the girls.
“I had model agents here saying, ‘These three girls could really, really work, but this must change,’ so there was a whole behind-the-scenes thing happening,” Banks explained. “Instead of me saying, ‘You must change this,’ on TV, I think what I should have said is, ‘You’re beautiful.'”
Nevertheless, Banks stands by the show’s mission, which was to show diversity in the beauty industry, despite the pitfalls she may have made.
“America’s Next Top Model was created — I created it — to introduce diversity and inclusion into a world that was pretty much not representing that or representing it in the most minute ways. So that was the crux of why I created America’s Next Top Model. It’s why my partner Ken Mok and I, who’s Chinese American, got up every single day, and we made so many inroads.”
