is serving up some behind-the-scenes tea about what cast members did— and more importantly didn’t—get while on the set of .

Adrianne— who was the show’s first winner back in 2003 but has gone on to speak out frequently about the dark side of the show— took to Instagram on Monday to post a video, claiming the models were given little food and sleep by producers during her season. 

“Ready for some ‘Top Model’ tea? When we were filming for the show, they would start eliminations at like 10 p.m. at night. We would have to stand there for four, five, six hours!” Adrianne said. “Hours just standing there, waiting to be eliminated or talked to, and have to deal with them doing like a thousand takes.”

According to Adrianne, the models were also horrifically sleep-deprived.

“We would go to bed at like 3:30 [in the morning] and then they’d wake us up at, like 5:30, 6 [in the morning],” she said. “And this was like every day for months.”

Hunger was also a constant feeling, according to the Cycle 1 winner.

“Also, they wouldn’t feed us. We’d wake up in the morning and have no time to eat, rush out the door to a photoshoot and then not eat until 2 or 3 p.m.,” she said. 

“I lost so much weight. I went home and looked skeletal,” she said. “It was some rough s**t.” 

In the comment section of her post, Adrianne gave an example of how desperate she says she was for food while filming for the show. 

“I went to the ER. I was so hungry when they brought us undercooked chicken…I didn’t notice the inside was bloody till one of the girls pointed it out,” she wrote.

(During an episode that aired in June 2003 entitled “The Girl Who Gets Rushed to the Emergency Room,” Adrianne is shown being taken to the ER with “severe food poisoning.” She later left the ER against medical advice to make it back in time for judging, something the judges praised her for during the episode.) 

“We were basically nocturnal zombies, snatching a measly 2 hours of sleep a night for two months—my eye bags could’ve auditioned for their own spin-off!” Adrianne wrote in the caption of the post. “We ate so little, I dropped 10 pounds faster than you can say ‘smize,’ and trust me, I was already serving skeleton chic with NO weight to spare! This was back in the wild, wild west of reality TV, before they slapped on rules to keep us contestants from turning into human celery sticks.”

‘America’s Next Top Model’ premiered in 2003 in what is considered to be the early days of reality TV. Because of this, Adrianne claimed there was no one regulating the show for safety and health issues like most current reality shows have today, resulting in horrible conditions for the cast.

“How was this even legal?” one person wrote in the comment section of Adrianne’s post.

“It wasn’t,” Adrianne replied. “They started making rules and regulations on TV so they couldn’t do things like that anymore.

“Later seasons had more protections. As reality tv progressed, rules, etc.,” she told another person in the comment section. 

Adrianne is not the first ‘Top Model’ contestant to allege unsafe conditions on the show’s set. In November, Season 9 contestant claimed “a girl fainted every week” on her season.

(Fans of the show will remember several girls— most notably Season 4’s fainting during judging.)

@sunfl0wer656 😲😲😲#fyp #foryou #foryoupage #realitytv #americasnexttopmodel #dramatic #viral ♬ original sound – rosethorne

“Us being confused, tired, stressed, sleep-deprived and hungry just made for better TV,” Sarah told the New York Post in 2021. 

Other ‘Top Model’ stars have backed up Adrianne’s claims that the producers used the contestants’ lack of sleep to their advantage.

“We’re also sleep-deprived by production, which, sleep deprivation [is] used throughout reality television to keep people emotionally volatile,” Cycle 8 star told Entertainment Weekly in 2023. “If you look at studies on sleep deprivation, the CIA used to use it as an interrogation technique. So, they’re just screwing with people’s minds in order to have them in this heightened state to keep them overly reactive.”

In a TikTok video posted in November 2024, Cycle 23 winner also discussed the awful conditions the models endured during the filming of the judging panel segments. 

@indiagants Replying to @Dylan Pishik Bryan ♬ original sound – India Gants

“Panel on ‘America’s Next Top Model’ is, indeed, 12 hours, sometimes. It takes a long time…” she said. “We’d have been filming for multiple hours before the judges even get there… we do get to sit down maybe four or five times during panel to take a break, get water, use the bathroom, things like that. And also, it totally makes sense that people fainted. We had one girl faint during our season.

“It’s because we’re wearing high heels all of the time. You’re not remembering to drink water. Sometimes [producers] would provide water, but it’s kind of up to you…

“I got in trouble one time because I didn’t wear heels to panel…I attempted wearing flats to panel, because you literally stand there for hours on end and I got in trouble for it,” India stated.

In recent years, ‘ANTM’ creator  and some of the other producers have been criticized for the conditions the models were made to work under, as well as some of the problematic photoshoots and comments that aired on the show. Tyra has rarely commented on the criticism. However, back in March she did address the controversy the show created during a speech at the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Awards. Tyra admitted that she didn’t always “get it right,” telling the audience, “I said some dumb s**t.” 

(Photos: CW; Instagram)