Could America’s Next Top Model Cycle 25 Really Happen?
Tyra Banks teased a new season of ANTM. Is she for real?
Like all millennial women, I grew up watching America’s Next Top Model with a completely uncritical eye. I was captivated by the crazy editorial shoots, watching just how much goes into making a great photo come to life. But like most girls who grew up and caught an episode of ANTM here and there, I quickly realized just how body-shaming and racially insensitive many of the show’s big moments really were. This, along with many other crossed lines, is the subject of Netflix’s documentary Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. In the final interview of the doc, ANTM host Tyra Banks mentions a new cycle of the show, as though she may have been working to revive it behind the scenes. So, could we really get an ANTM Cycle 25? Here’s what we know so far.
Is America’s Next Top Model still running?
Well, we didn’t think so, but now the show seems poised for a comeback. We don’t have any concrete information or confirmations of who might be involved, but there are rumblings that another season of ANTM is in the works.
I never realized just how many seasons of ANTM there were until this documentary: 24, to be exact. The last cycle aired in 2018. So when Banks closes out the documentary by saying, “I feel like my work is not done. You have no idea what we have planned for Cycle 25,” it felt like a clear announcement that the show will be returning.
This isn’t the first time Banks has hinted at her plans for a 25th cycle, according to Entertainment Weekly. Her announcement in Reality Check comes seven years after Banks told EW, in an interview for her Life-Size 2 movie, that she was considering bringing the show back. She said then that the 25th installment would likely be its last, and might be another all-star season that sees the return of fan-favorite contestants from years past. She also hinted at her efforts to launch the 25th cycle during a 2024 interview with E! News, saying she’d tried, but the “powers that be” were not swayed at the time.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Reality Check directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan were asked about Tyra’s teasing of a 25th season. Neither confirmed that it’s really happening, but Sivan said, “If they do Cycle 25, I hope it would be based on characters and not appearances.” If British tabloid The Sun is correct, their anonymous source close to Tyra claims a new judge will join the panel for an in-the-works Cycle 25, while Miss J and Nigel Barker could return, and the season would indeed attempt to right the wrongs of its past by being inclusive and body-positive. This info has begun circulating on Reddit to mixed reviews from fans.
Reality Check is Banks’ first-ever response to the intense backlash ANTM has faced in recent years, with viewers criticizing photoshoots in which contestants donned blackface, dressed as unhoused people, and were made to pose like murder victims. The treatment of the contestants has also been called into question, from the sexual assault of Shandi Sullivan being recorded rather than interrupted to the pressure on the models to have permanent dental procedures and lose weight by any means necessary in order to book more jobs.
The consensus among viewers seems to be that Banks skirted any accountability — a still of her from the documentary has already become a coded meme meaning “I’m not sorry.”
On ANTM Reddit, fans are not optimistic about a final season being any good.
“They'll be posing in vats of hot ice cream while putting on Tyra's MLM makeup blindfolded and trying to smize while being sprayed in the face with seltzer. So fierce!” wrote one commenter. “It will probably go as well as the latest season of Project Runway, low quality and not well received,” said another.
One comment questions whether a 25th season is truly underway, or if Banks is using this documentary and its reception to gauge the public’s interest. “I think she's casually gauging interest but it's not truly a done deal. She wants to see feedback on the doc first,” they wrote.
Whether or not the world needs another season of this show is certainly a hot topic of conversation. As of right now, all we have to go on is Banks’ word, and it seems like many ANTM fans are hesitant to take them at face value anymore.
