“They warned us, they were like, ‘Don’t lock your knees!'” said cycle 9 contestant Sarah Hartshorne.
From Rebecca Epley’s terrifying fall backwards on America’s Next Top Model cycle 4 to cycle 9’s Heather Kuzmich enduring a medical scare on the set of an Enrique Iglesias music video, fainting spells have long dotted the legacy of Tyra Banks’ modeling competition series. Now, Kuzmich’s season sister Sarah Hartshorne alleges that many more contestants actually fainted on the set of the show than fans saw on TV.
“A girl fainted every week,” Hartshorne, who competed on cycle 9 in 2007, recalled on Tuesday night’s finale of the Vice TV docuseries Dark Side of Reality TV. “They warned us, they were like, ‘Don’t lock your knees!’ I was like, ‘These skinny bitches, they’re fainting!’ Then, 10 hours later I was like, ‘I’m fainting!'”
Hartshorne, who was 20 years old when she filmed Top Model cycle 9, said a lack of food contributed to physical issues at the time, including losing weight — a development that the show’s judges pointed out ahead of her elimination after she joined the competition as a plus-size model.
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Rebecca Epley and Heather Kuzmich faint on ‘America’s Next Top Model’
“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,” she alleged in the docuseries. “So, I was only trying to eat very little and very cheap food.”
Hartshorne’s cycle of the show contained a particularly harrowing moment involving the aforementioned Kuzmich, who lost her balance and was subsequently given oxygen through a mask while the contestants competed on the set of Iglesias’ “Tired of Being Sorry” music video. Earlier, on cycle 4, Epley fell backward to the judging room floor in the middle of receiving critiques from the panelists, with footage showing Banks calling for medics to come to the model’s assistance.
Other notable medical incidents that occurred during Top Model‘s run include cycle 6 winner Danielle Evans overcoming dehydration (and even hospitalization) to power through a shoot on the back of an elephant in Thailand, as well as cycle 10’s Claire Unabia injuring her neck after diving onto a sheet of hard plastic during a photo challenge. Cycle 7 winner CariDee English also developed hypothermia during a water-based shoot inside a swimming pool.
“I was in an interview room for almost seven hours by myself with three people,” Turner alleged. “I was begging her to stop asking me questions about being suicidal. They ended up using the response of me crying saying, ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore’ as my response for losing the competition, and that’s not at all what happened.”
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for producers Ken Mok and Laura Fuest Silva, as well as to a representative for Banks for comment.
Hartshorne is one of many contestants to have spoken out against ANTM in recent years, also including 14 past competitors who reflected on their experience on the show for EW’s 20th anniversary oral history of the program’s wildest moments, ranging from several models addressing controversial challenges that saw them painting their skin dark colors to portray different races, to alum Angelea Preston’s account of allegedly being stripped of her title due to past sex work initially winning the all-star cycle 17 edition of the show.
In response to the oral history, Mok declined to comment on individual instances, though he told EW at the time through a representative: “As this story has been reported on numerous times over the last 20 years, I have nothing left to add except that I have nothing but respect for everyone who has appeared on the show. I wish all of [the contestants] nothing but health and happiness in their future endeavors.”
ANTM has aired 24 cycles across three networks to date, with the last cycle airing on VH1 in 2018. Still, the show was never formally canceled. In an interview with EW that year tied to her role in the TV film Life-Size 2, Banks said that she wanted to bring ANTM back for cycle 25 — which she stressed would be its final cycle, and toyed with the idea of making it the franchise’s second all-star cycle with fan-favorite contestants from prior installments. However, earlier this year, EW learned that Banks had no current plans to bring the show back for another cycle.
