Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model takes a fresh look at one of reality television’s most influential and debated series, exploring its cultural impact through open conversations with former contestants, judges, producers, and creator Tyra Banks. Bringing together years of archival footage and modern perspectives, the documentary examines the show’s legacy and continued significance. In this interview, editors Stefanie Maridueña, ACE, Austin Flack, and Mimi Wilcox discuss the editorial approach behind shaping the documentary’s narrative, bringing together diverse perspectives, and revisiting a defining chapter in reality television for a new generation.
Upon initially approaching Reality Check, what aspects of its structure distinguished this story from other stories of reality television as seen by the audiences?
Stefanie Maridueña, ACE: Reality Check is not just an exposé of America’s Next Top Model. The story held a lot of nuance and required a full picture examination which we were able to achieve by including, not just the models’ experiences, but also the creators’ and judges’ perspectives. Having direct access to Tyra Banks, Ken Mok, Nigel Barker, Mr Jay and Miss J was an opportunity to go behind the scenes and understand how ANTM became a cultural phenomenon. This was a rare opportunity for our audience to hear directly from Tyra about what it took to create the show and the effort required to change the fashion industry and become a trailblazer. We knew these stories would be appreciated by original fans of the show but were also necessary to understand why ANTM became a huge hit. By contrast, including the models was integral to exploring the influence and damaging legacy of the show. Real lives and aspirations were crushed in the process and it was important to platform these stories. The models were also the heart of the series and their anecdotes and experiences on the show invited the audience to join in their emotional journey.
As documentarians, we presented all of this to our viewers and allowed them to derive their own conclusions about the legacy of America’s Next Top Model. That’s what makes Reality Check so compelling because it trusts the audience to create their own judgement with all the information that we presented to them.
Episode two revisits the aftermath of Shandi Sullivan’s experience in Milan, which has become one of the most discussed portions of the documentary. What conversations went into shaping that chapter of the documentary?
Stefanie Maridueña, ACE: Right off the bat, we recognized that we were dealing with very sensitive subject matter and a difficult experience for Shandi. We knew the weight this carried and our priority was to handle this story responsibly. Part of that priority meant giving Shandi an opportunity to own her narrative. She had not previously spoken about her experience and it was apparent that she was still wrestling with what happened that night in Milan. Every decision was made with this in mind. We also wanted to ensure that in the process of revisiting this incident, we weren’t retraumatizing Shandi but empowering her. So it was an obvious decision to put emphasis on Shandi’s voice and her perspective. After Reality Check aired, our director, Mor Loushy, let me know that Shandi expressed satisfaction with how we handled her story. I hope it was a healing experience for her.
Was there a particular interview or archival moment that significantly changed the direction of an episode during the editing process?
Austin Flack: Keenyah’s bodyshaming arc was critical to our series because the body-shaming she endured across multiple episodes was so clearly the result of intentional production choices, careful story construction, and deceptive editing. That made it very hard to write off as simply another painful reflection of the fashion industry status quo at the time.
But the most powerful element of that arc came from something she told us in an interview: that over the years, fans had reached out to her directly to say that watching her be body-shamed on Top Model had given them eating disorders and lasting body image issues. The problem was that this moment wasn’t quite landing in the edit. The weight of it wasn’t fully translating.
Then we found a TikTok in which a fan described, in specific and personal detail, how Keenyah’s storyline on ANTM had led her, as a teenager, to develop an eating disorder. That archival material was essential in helping us to translate a potentially abstract point about reality TV’s effect on its viewers into something personal, immediate, and emotional.
After spending much time involved in the world of America’s Next Top Model, what do you hope audiences take away from Reality Check?
Stefanie Maridueña, ACE: I hope it was a moment of reflection for the audience, especially for those of us that were fans of the show at a young age. Like many women in my generation, I certainly absorbed and internalized a lot of the toxic messaging that America’s Next Top Model normalized. Watching the show through a different lens all these years later made me realize its impact and long standing influence. Of course, ANTM didn’t exist in a vacuum, it was a reflection of the culture at the time. And while it was important to contextualize this for our audience, we also emphasized that entirely placing the blame on that era wasn’t a strong enough excuse for the things that happened in the show. With the resurgence of weight loss pills, filtered beauty and social media perfectionism in our culture today, I hope that the discourse from Reality Check helps to confront this evolved messaging around beauty standards.
How did you approach editing a story that many viewers believe they already know, especially with the presentation given by producers?
Mimi Wilcox: One thing I love about documentary storytelling is the opportunity to draw people in with a simple premise, and then reveal deeper layers of meaning. I saw such a potential to do that with Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. We were not just recounting a history of the show that thousands of people had already watched. We were also exploring deeper ideas about gender, race, body size, beauty standards, the fashion industry, the reality TV industry… The list goes on! I was moved to learn about Tyra’s intentions when she started the show, to create a better modeling industry than the one she had grown up in. That understanding made it extra heartbreaking to untangle how ANTM perpetuated many of the very same damaging attitudes that Tyra herself was a victim of. As a fan of the series growing up, I came in thinking I knew a lot about this story. But taking a deeper look at the incredible impact and legacy of ANTM led to revelations that continue to shape how I understand the world beyond ANTM, and I know that translated for so many audiences too.
In many ways, this documentary is about who gets to control a narrative. How did that theme shape your approach to storytelling?
Mimi Wilcox: This is a great question, and it’s something we were very cognizant of during the edit. We were fortunate to have so many people participate in Reality Check, from aspiring models on the show to Tyra herself. That was both an opportunity and a challenge to present a full picture of the complicated legacy of ANTM from all their perspectives, while still keeping in mind the power dynamics at play. I was so impressed by all of these women, many of whom had previously felt taken advantage of by their experience being edited on television and were now putting their trust in us to set the record straight. That was a responsibility we took very seriously, to ensure we didn’t perpetuate the very practices that had previously harmed our participants. For example, Shandi had felt betrayed not only by her experience on ANTM, but by her return to the Tyra Show, where she was forced to confront footage that she had explicitly said she did not want to revisit. On Reality Check, taking a more sensitive approach began in production, with our wonderful production team and directors Mor & Daniel, who approached the interviews with great care. In the edit, we were constantly putting ourselves in our participants’ shoes and considering how it might feel to be watching Reality Check from their perspective — particularly with the more difficult material. We worked hard to present each participant’s perspective honestly, and to embrace complexity rather than oversimplify.
How do you think reality television editing has evolved since ANTM first premiered, and what lessons from that era still resonate today?
Austin Flack: In my opinion, the primary way reality television editing has evolved since the early days of Top Model is that as audiences have grown fluent in the genre’s tropes, editors and producers have gotten far more sophisticated about disguising narrative manipulation as natural character development. A modern-day ANTM would absolutely still find ways to frame a contestant as “difficult,” or manufacture conflict between two competitors. But the problem for Top Model when it gained a new generation of viewers on streaming is that modern-day audiences saw through the facade. Their reaction to Top Model’s various machinations, online and in social media, is a key part of what helped Reality Check transcend early-aughts nostalgia and feel relevant to audiences who hadn’t grown up idolizing Tyra.
What aspect of the editing process was the most challenging, whether creatively, emotionally, or structurally?
Mimi Wilcox: Reality Check was a complex edit, and I am so grateful that we had such a collaborative relationship as editors to tackle the process together. One challenge that stands out to me is balancing tone across all three episodes of the series. For so many of us, watching America’s Next Top Model was a source of joy. We wanted to capture that in the edit, to celebrate what was positive about the show and channel the youth and energy of ANTM in our approach to cutting Reality Check. At the same time, Reality Check goes to some extremely dark and emotionally difficult places. It was so important to us to honor the solemnity of those moments, and bring sensitivity rather than sensationalism to those stories. This editing challenge mirrored the complicated experiences of our participants; each of them had memories both cherished and devastating from their time on ANTM. We followed those emotional threads as we moved between vastly different emotional beats throughout the series, and I think all of us learned a lot about crafting those transitions artfully and sensitively.
What ultimately drew you into editing and what exciting projects do you have in store for the future?
Stefanie Maridueña, ACE: My path into the industry is not traditional in the sense that I didn’t go to film school and intend to become an editor. Originally, I got a Bachelor of Science degree but after graduating college, I got a job as a transcriber on A&E’s The First 48 while I figured out my next steps. As fate would have it, I fell in love with nonfiction story telling while working on that show. I already had an interest in documentaries, so being exposed to the behind the scenes of this medium was really appealing to me. What drew me into editing was a personal project that I started after watching the Ted Talk “One Second Every Day” by Cesar Kuriyama. I started filming videos of my life every day and at the end of the year I would pick the best “one second” moments to string out into a sequence. It was a rudimentary exposure to editing but seeing how much of a story is shaped in the edit, even for something this simple, was fascinating to me. Once that interest was sparked, I started to edit everything I could get my hands on while working my way up in the industry. It’s been so exciting to see where my career has taken me and I’m so amazed and grateful for the opportunity to work on Emmy contending shows like Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. I can’t say what I have in store for the future, but it is my first feature documentary where I’m working with a wonderful team of creatives on a truly wonderful and powerful story.
Austin Flack: My path into editing was a bit unconventional. After USC film school I spent several years outside the industry entirely, working in education and tech, directing advocacy documentaries. I was only editing the documentaries I directed out of necessity, but eventually I realized the skill had become a real strength, and I started pursuing it as a career. That led to years in reality television on shows like Top Chef, MasterChef, and Catfish: the TV Show, and then eventually into the docuseries work that I find most creatively fulfilling, like The Battle for Justina Pelletier and Good One: A Show About Jokes. Reality Check came at exactly the right moment for me, and the response to the series has been very gratifying. My next project, Taken: Natalee Holloway, is a Netflix docuseries coming very soon, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how audiences respond!
Mimi Wilcox: I was drawn to documentary out of a curiosity about the world and passion for learning about people, places and ideas I might not otherwise have been exposed to. I was thrilled to find that editing was very much like writing, and as a lover of puzzles of all kinds, I love the puzzle of solving a tough scene or story structure and figuring out how all the pieces fit together. Though I didn’t go to film school, and improbably studied Economics and Russian Studies in college, I received an incredible education in documentary storytelling at the wonderful Kartemquin Films in Chicago. The rest is history! Currently, I am editing a feature documentary called The Seven Ages of Olajuwon, directed by Bobby Herrera. Outside of editing, I am also a director who loves to edit my own projects. I directed the short Bad Hostage, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award this year. I’m also developing a feature documentary about IUDs, and dipping a toe into the fiction storytelling world. All of these projects are exciting in their own ways, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to edit Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. It was so meaningful to me to revisit a show that had such an impact on me growing up, and I am tremendously proud of our work on this Emmy-contending documentary.
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For more information about their work, please visit; stefmariduena.com, telegramfilm.com, mimiwilcox.com.
