America’s Next Top Model winner Dani Evans — who won Cycle 6, which aired in 2006 on UPN — opened up about her tough experiences post-show with host and executive producer Tyra Banks during her appearance on Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.
Evans’ appearance on America’s Next Top Model afforded her the win, but after revisiting the series on Reality Check, the Little Rock, Arkansas native said her experience was more difficult than viewers realized.
Best known for being pressured to have the gap in her teeth closed during her time on the competition, Evans revisited her season with a critical eye and a a sense of maturity. Sharing that after winning she struggled to find work as a model despite her contract, Evans recounted a phone call with Banks that left her uneasy.
On Reality Check (via EW), Evans explained Banks “told me, 'I knew that there were certain doors that you couldn’t even get into because you did Top Model. And I did nothing about it,’ she said to me, 'I always rode the fence with you.'“
Tearful, Evans explained how difficult it had been for her in the industry with the stigma of America’s Next Top Model on her back, making it clear that she’d expected Banks to support her in the most basic sense of the word. “To have her, a Black woman, say to me over the phone that I knew you were struggling and I did nothing about it? What?” Evans said.
Explaining that Banks “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,” she made it clear that for most, the dream “never became realized.”
While Evans has gone on to establish herself in her adulthood without Banks’ assistance, she and other America’s Next Top Model alumni were quick to expose the difficulties they faced with Banks and the production itself on Reality Check.