America’s Next Top Model’s exposé docuseries on Netflix allowed Shandi Sullivan, a contestant from the reality TV juggernaut’s second season, to finally open up about her difficult experience.
The early seasons of America’s Next Top Model, which premiered in 2003 and quickly became a cultural touchstone, were a threadbare undertaking. With Tyra Banks at the helm, hoping to create a competition that encapsulated the highs and lows of entering the cut-throat modeling industry, the series didn’t have as many protections in place to keep its contestants safe as it should’ve.
According to People, in Netflix's new docuseries, Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model, Sullivan opens up as one of the earliest contestants from ANTM. Well-known for one of the first notable reality TV cheating scandals, Sullivan was said to have cheated on her boyfriend back home during the season after an alcohol-fueled night in Milan. The reality, as Sullivan explains it, was far more painful.
According to the outlet, Sullivan explains in the docuseries that she was “pretty drunk” after a day of filming go-sees for the competition, and a night spent with a group of guys who were hired by producers to drive the girls around the busy Italian city. After spending some time in the hot tub with one of the guys, Shandi remembers bits and pieces. ”I remember him on top of me,” she explains. “I was blacked out. No one did anything to stop it. And it all got filmed, all of it."
Sullivan revealed in the docuseries that she “didn't even feel sex happening. I just knew it was happening.” Despite putting her trust in the America’s Next Top Model producers, Sullivan wasn’t protected in the moment, and her assault was edited to make it seem like she had simply cheated on her long-distance boyfriend.
Catching wind throughout the early 2000s, Sullivan’s “cheating scandal” was tabloid fodder that made waves in pop culture for years to come. Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model will highlight Sullivan’s actual story, as well as other behind-the-scenes moral failures of the early reality TV hit.