Lisa D’Amato, one of the most outspoken figures to emerge from America’s Next Top Model, isn’t holding back. The two-time contestant is clapping back at Tyra Banks’ upcoming documentary by starring in her own competing project.
Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model promises to “expose the show’s complicated legacy,” framing Banks and developer Ken Mok as figures ready to face accountability. D’Amato, 45, isn’t convinced. “Tyra’s all about making money. She doesn’t have any real empathy for anybody else but herself,” she told Page Six. She sees the doc as a move to “save face,” a calculated play to protect future earnings.
Banks, who judged 23 of the show’s 24 cycles from 2003 to 2018, admits in the trailer that she sometimes went “too far.” D’Amato is skeptical: she predicts the acknowledgment will be minimal—“about 5% accountability”—and more about optics than genuine contrition. She frames the project as a classic Tyra-Mok maneuver: profitable, but not sincere.
The former model and activist has long criticized Banks and Mok, 64, for exploiting contestants’ personal trauma for drama. D’Amato’s own experience on Cycle 5, she says, pushed her to extremes: she was forced into humiliating challenges, including a notorious baby-themed episode where she deliberately urinated in a diaper to make a point. “To me, that was a big F U to Ken Mok,” she says, recalling the punishment and heavy-handed editing that followed.
Returning for Cycle 17: All Stars, D’Amato came back with a strategy: reclaim her narrative and transform the “villain” persona imposed on her. Therapy and preparation gave her leverage. “Either I was going to let it perpetuate in a negative backlash forever—or I could go in and try to change it, help my mental health, and show other girls that you can be your own hero,” she says.
Though she plans to watch Reality Check, it will be more a professional dissection than a casual viewing. She knows many of the contestants interviewed and worries their stories will be “manipulated” or “softened.” For D’Amato, the project is a reminder: the truth of ANTM lives off-camera.
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Last modified: February 17, 2026
