Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors
A former America's Next Top Model contestant revealed that models fainted on the show far more often than you might think.
"A girl fainted every week," Sarah Hartshorne alleged in the finale episode of Vice's docuseries Dark Side of Reality TV on Tuesday, November 19. "They warned us, they were like, 'Don't lock your knees!' I was like, 'These skinny b***hes, they're fainting!' Then, 10 hours later I was like, 'I'm fainting!'"
Hartshorne, who was 20 at the time, had initially joined cycle 9 as a plus-sized model. However, she lost weight throughout the show, which judges pointed out ahead of eliminating her from the series.
"The reason I was losing weight was, A, I was stressed, but also that I was trying to save money because we weren't getting paid. So, I was only trying to eat very little and very cheap food," the 37-year-old comedian alleged.
Perhaps the most famous incident from Hartshorne's season was when Heather Kuzmich took a fall on the set of Enrique Igelsias' "Tired of Being Sorry" music video. She had been selected as one of the featured models for the challenge, but lost her balance and ended up needing to be given oxygen through a mask.
In cycle 4, contestant Rebecca Epley infamously fainted while being critiqued by the panel of judges. Host Tyra Banks had to call for medics to come to Epley's assistance.
Other medical incidents on the show include when cycle 6 winner Danielle Evans suffered from dehydration while posing on an elephant in Thailand, and in cycle 10, when Claire Unabia injured her neck in a photo shoot that had her diving onto a sheet of hard plastic.
Another winner, cycle 7's CariDee English, also suffered an injury on set. She developed hypothermia during a photo shoot that took place in a swimming pool.
Hartshorne also recalled being made to line up with "between 100 and 200" girls in a ballroom and being made to walk "nose to the back of the head" during the audition process. "So, we all had to, like, as a centipede, step forward, out of our shoes," she explained.
Having competed on the show as a plus-sized model, Hartshorne questioned how she would even be able to follow such instructions. She said she remembered "looking down and being like, I'm the only one that has t*ts that make that impossible."
America's Next Top Model has come under fire in recent years, since it began streaming on Hulu, and younger generations have taken to social media to denounce the treatment of the models as well as inappropriate photo shoots — like ones in which models' skin was darkened with makeup so they could portray different races.
Fourteen previous contestants for the show even spoke with Entertainment Weekly in 2023 to look back on the "traumatic" experience 20 years later.
Hartshorne has written an entire book on her experiences on the reality competition show, called You Wanna Be on Top? A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America's Next Top Model. Her memoir releases on July 8, 2025.
English (US) ·