'America's Next Top Model' contestant says show 'was a cult' with strict rules, threats
One"America's Next Top Model"alum is taking the reality TV show's famous slogan to memoir, revealing what she says it was really like behind thesmize. Sarah Hartshorne, the only plus-size model in ANTM Cycle 9, is sharing her story in "You Wanna Be On Top,"out now from Penguin Random House. Part memoir and part analysis, Hartshorne interviews fellow contestants and production crews to deep dive into what she calls an "iconic but deeply flawed" show. In this excerpt provided to USA TODAY, Hartshorne recalls her first day in what she deems the "cult" ofTyra Banks'ANTM. Before boarding the cruise ship SS Adventure, the contract the show had sent me seemed huge. There were hundreds of pages of legalese that I barely understood. But by the time we docked in Saint Martin, it felt like an albatross. A few days in, the shine had worn off a little, and the show started to feel like a cult, from the undisclosed filming locations in international waters to not being allowed to speak for days at a time. The language that they hammered into us over and over again urged us to be grateful for this opportunity. And the reality is ... itwasa cult. I got suckered into a cult. Negotiating never even occurred to me. But if it had, all the lawyers I interviewed for this book agreed: It's not an option. Either you sign or you don't. You're in or you're out. "You are not going to get control over how you are represented" under any circumstances, said one lawyer. And yet we all signed it. I didn't care how I was represented as long as I was represented on TV. Early in the morning on our first full day aboard the cruise ship, we were led into some kind of conference room and told to wait for five minutes, which turned into hours. The room was hotel fancy: a lot of shiny fake wood paneling and inoffensive carpeting. It was a stark visual contrast to our tropical cruise wear: jean shorts, espadrilles, and spaghetti strap tank tops. We shivered in the harsh air-conditioning. There weren't enough chairs, so some of us sat on the ground. We started upright and alert, trying to blend into the professional-looking background, but as the minutes dragged on, we slowly drooped and slouched toward the ground like neglected houseplants. Finally, a team of mostly men and a few women barged through the door. Their suits and intense businesslike energy sliced through the air. They were like vaguely corporate alien invaders to our lush, listless planet. They introduced themselves, but I couldn't pick any of them out of a lineup. They were just so … grown up, and I felt like a child sitting crisscross applesauce on the ground and staring up at them, patiently and nervously waiting. There were lawyers from the production company and executive producers. They were the top of the production pecking order; everyone else in the crew deferred to them. They began a group presentation that was clearly well rehearsed. One would speak and then seamlessly cede the floor to another. After all, we were Cycle 9. They'd had eight other audiences to hone these performances with and really find the best way to sell it. It felt repetitive to the point of tedium to me, but they never wavered. "America's Next Top Model is sitting inside this room," they said. "Really think about that. Look around. This is your competition. You are the select few. Does anyone know how many girls tried out for this show?" We all shook our heads. They all smiled. "A lot. Thousands upon thousands. Ten thousand tried out in Boston alone." I looked at the few other girls whom I recognized from the Boston tryouts with wide eyes. "And it wasn't just the auditions. Thousands upon thousands sent in audition tapes from all over the country. Every single state. We had casting scouts all over looking for candidates. And you guys are the ones who made it. You're here. And it's not just your looks. You all know that being a top model is more than that. It's who you are. And one of you … is America's Next Top Model. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." They kept going. And going. I was uncomfortable with this level of flattery. In "Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism," Amanda Montell describes this tactic used by cult leaders: "When you convince someone that they're above everyone else, it helps you both distance them from outsiders and also abuse them, because you can paint anything from physical assault to unpaid labor to verbal attacks as 'special treatment' reserved only for them." On the one hand, I desperately wanted to feel special. I was one of the select few! On the other hand, this whole process had felt so random, it had never once felt like I was actually doing anything particularly special. "This experience can only be what you make of it," they said, for the first time of many. Suddenly their tones and demeanor shifted. They had been serious and kind, and now there was something else in the air. One of them stepped out from the line they'd been in. "That information is worth more than you know. If you do anything to put that information at risk, we will sue you for five million dollars." He paused for effect. The NDA section of the contract carried, famously, a fine of five million dollars if violated, as Janice Dickinson once bemoaned in a red-carpet interview. A gorgeous, long-limbed bartender from Boston with a lazy eye and an accent so thick I wanted to cut into it like it was a rib eye broke the silence. "Yeah, but, like … I don't have five million dollahs." "We know you don't. We know all about all of your financial information. None of you have five million dollars. None of your families have five million dollars either." We looked around at one another as we all realized that, yes, of course, that was true. We'd given them detailed accounts of our personal financial information as well as our families' before we'd even received our plane tickets. "What you need to understand is we won't just sue you. We'll sue your entire family. And I don't just mean your parents. We'll sue your kids..." Boston opened her mouth to say something, presumably that she didn't have any kids, that none of us did. "... by which I mean your future kids. We'll sue your children, we'll sue your children's children, we'll sue your children's children's children." I swallowed the lump in my throat. How would that even work? I wondered. "Sorry, but ... how would that even work?" a girl asked, and I was so relieved. "Great question," said the producer sincerely. "Here's how it would work: we would sue you and win. And the judge will decide how much we get to dock your pay for the rest of your life. For the rest of your life, every dollar you earn, we will get a cut. We will garnishee your wages for the rest of your life. And after you die, we'll get a percentage of every dollar your children earn, and their children, and on and on, until we get five million dollars plus interest. If you say anything to anyone, you will be paying us back long after you are dead. You will never achieve any level of success without us taking a huge chunk of it. Buying a house, putting your kids through college, finishing college yourself – all of that will be impossible." Kids and a house felt impossibly out of reach already. And the meeting just kept going: hours of them hammering the same point over and over. I desperately wanted them to know that I would be one of the "good ones" who would do what she was told and wouldn't cause them any trouble. But I knew that there was no way to make them see that. There was no way to make them see me at all. They weren't performing for us; they were performing for the contract and for the money that it guaranteed them. They were performing for the promise of good TV. And unlike my hypothetical kids and house, it wasn't out of reach. They knew what they wanted and exactly how to get it. "There's a million girls that would happily take your place," they kept saying. "And we have their phone numbers. They're ready and willing to meet us on the next island." That night at dinner, I sat pushing the food around on my plate, still stunned into silence. As a kid, I was painfully shy. Every report card I brought home from elementary school said that I was smart and capable but never spoke up in class. I had one friend, which I thought was more than enough. After years of badgering me to invite people to my birthday parties, my mom finally asked me what I really wanted to do. I told her I wanted to spend the night at a hotel. So she got us a room at the local Motel 6 for the night. I swam in the pool for hours; we ate cake in bed and watched all the late-night talk shows. I loved seeing the comedians do stand-up. It was my favorite birthday ever. In fifth grade, I discovered that I could do more than just watch comedy on late-night shows: I could use it to overcome my crippling social anxiety. I slowly came out of my shell. Making people laugh was the only way I really knew how to connect with people, but after the lecture that day, I didn't feel very funny. So I reverted to my childhood self: Shy. Silent. That's why Ebony and I were perfect cruise ship roommates: we were both introverts who could fake it when we had to. When I met Ebony, my first thought was: She's going to win. In a group of the most beautiful girls I'd ever seen, she stood out head and shoulders above the rest. Literally: she was over six feet tall and wore her hair in a big, messy bun on top of her head that made her even taller. When we first got to our room, she seemed shy, sweet, guarded, and deeply insecure. Then we went to dinner, and I watched her become a different person for the camera. "I didn't come here to make friends," she said in the van. "I'll start remembering y'all's names when we make it to the house." But in our room, she was different. "I want to be smart about this. I'm trying to be, like, the b---- or whatever, but it's harder than I thought," she told me. Oftentimes, we wouldn't talk much in the room: we both needed quiet and space (at least as much quiet and space as possible in a forty-eight-square-foot room). That night, we said even less than usual. "That was ... pretty crazy," I said. "Dinner?" she asked. "No, the talk about the contract," I answered. "(Expletive), yeah! That was crazy! I didn't know how to act at dinner after all that." "Oh my god, me too!" I said, relieved again. "I didn't even know how to be a normal person!" We agreed that it was wild and way too long and we were glad it was over. None of us were going to be forgetting any of that anytime soon—surely that was the end of it. The Very Scary Producers and Lawyers gave us the Talk AGAIN in which we were threatened with defamation, disembowelment, and death if we breathed a peep of anything to anyone. They are, let me say, not at all (expletive) around, and I (expletive) GET IT, I wrote in my journal several long, repetitive days later. Over and over, we heard that "America's Next Top Model is in this room," "this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," "this experience is only what you make of it," and "we will garnishee your wages for the rest of your life." These phrases started rattling around in my mind, like a song that gets stuck in your head. Of course, it wasn't just our contracts that we were dealing with; there was also the deal between the cruise line and the network, and, on that front, there was some tension. Specifically, between the show and the passengers, who hated us. One day, we were divided into three groups and led to a part of the ship we'd never been to before. One group was taken to the climbing wall, one to the skating rink, and my group was brought to the hot tub. A production assistant arranged us around the hot tub, some girls sitting with just their feet in the water, and a few of us, including me, sitting in the water. I was in the middle, submerged almost to my neck. "I hope we can go in the pool after this," I said, slowly cooking in the water. "No talking yet," said one of the cameramen. "Sorry," I said. "Oh, and sorry for saying sorry. (Expletive)." Eventually, they got the angles and lighting right and called action, and we were allowed to talk. Allowed to talk and contractually obligated to look like we were having the time of our lives. From the book "You Wanna Be On Top?: A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America's Next Top Model" by Sarah Hartshorne. Copyright © 2025 by Sarah Hartshorne. Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:'America's Next Top Model' was 'a cult,' former contestant says
'America's Next Top Model' contestant says show 'was a cult' with strict rules, threats One"America's Next Top ...
