Curry told EW in a 2023 interview that the only gig she received for winning the show was a $15,000 makeup demonstration and an unsuccessful agency deal that paled in comparison to the promised prizes.

ANTM cycle 1 winner Adrianne Curry alleges she didn’t receive full prize for winning: ‘F---ing humiliated’ (exclusive)

Curry told EW in a 2023 interview that the only gig she received for winning the show was a $15,000 makeup demonstration and an unsuccessful agency deal that paled in comparison to the promised prizes.

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February 14, 2026 12:00 p.m. ET

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'ANTM' winner Adrianne Curry and Tyra Banks in 2003. Credit:

Frederick M. Brown/Getty

Adrianne Curry might've won *America's Next Top Model* cycle 1, but that doesn't mean the TV personality won everything that the models hoped for across the inaugural season of Tyra Banks' beloved reality show.

"One of you is about to be a star in a matter of minutes," Banks told Curry and finalist Shannon Stewart before crowning *ANTM*'s first winner at the tail end of cycle 1 in 2003. "Your life is going to change." Things certainly *would* change for Curry, who prevailed over Stewart as show's first champion, but she told ** in a 2023 interview highlighting the most shocking moments in *ANTM* history that her "prizes" might've hurt her career as a model more than they helped.

"What I won was to go to Revlon corporate, sit in a back room, have a makeup artist put makeup on my face for a team of about seven people watching me. Who the f--- would fight as hard as we fought for that?" Curry said at the time, adding that she was "f---ing humiliated" by the gig — which she claimed paid only $15,000 — after the show's panel spent the entire first cycle promising that contestants would be "huge Revlon models" with careers on par with Cindy Crawford and Banks herself.

Adrianne Curry gets her makeover on 'America's Next Top Model' cycle 1.

In footage of the cycle's final episode reviewed by EW, Banks told the cast that the winner of the competition would score "a contract with Revlon, a fashion spread in *Marie Claire* magazine, and representation by top modeling agency Wilhelmina," but Curry claimed that *ANTM* swapping agencies the following year (IMG Models stepped in for Wilhelmina as the prize agency on cycle 2) made her a pariah at work.

"[The agents] wanted me to fail. They straight-up told me. They were pissed off because *Top Model* made them a bunch of promises they didn't keep because no agency wanted to be part of the show when it first came out," Curry said, alleging that Wilhelmina was "bitter as f---" over the shift, and hoped that, in holding her back from castings, it would reflect poorly on the credibility of Banks' show.

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"Twenty years ago, Wilhelmina had different owners and staff. Wilhelmina is now a public company. It seems unlikely there would be sufficient motivation to harm Tyra and not try to maximize a model's earning potential," former Wilhelmina VP Ray Lata told EW when reached for comment at the time.

Curry maintained in 2023 that her relationship with the agency was so bad that her ex-husband, *Brady Bunch* star Christopher Knight, attempted to get her out of the three-year agreement.

"We went into Wilhelmina, my contract was almost up, he was like, 'What the f---?' I'm going to say something nice about him. He's a smart guy and he was like, 'You got f---ed!' He's a former child star, and he knows how that goes, and it lit a little fire under his ass," remembered Curry. "So, we went into Wilhelmina and he's like, 'Break this contract. You guys f---ed her over.'"

'ANTM' cycle 1 cast in a photo in 'Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model'.

Knight was not available to comment for the story at the time, but Phil Viardo, his manager and Curry's ex-manager, called the period in Curry's career the "Wilhelmina wars." Viardo added that he attempted to do some "arm-bending" to get her out of her contract. "They did less than nothing for her as an agency," he said.

Curry recalled that she tried to go to show staff for help, but that they "stopped answering phone calls" shortly thereafter. She said she regrets using subsequent interviews to lash out at both Banks and *ANTM* in her early 20s, and is now thankful for the experience, which led her to a lucrative career working on other television projects as well as her current gig as one of Avon's top-selling representatives in the world.

"Tyra Banks learned to look out for Tyra Banks. She's a product of her environment, and I don't blame her. For her to be as successful as she is, bravo. She didn't owe me s---," said Curry. "I know there are a lot of bitter contestants. I'm not at all. I'm glad that happened: the good, the bad, the ugly, because it really molded my life." (Banks declined to comment on Curry's allegations about Wilhelmina at the time.)

In recent years, Curry continued to speak out about various things from her *ANTM* experience, including an October 2025 social media post in which she claimed that she was left "partially bald" after receiving a weave as part of a makeover segment on the show over two decades prior. At the time, Banks’s representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Curry alleged that the makeover led to her having "an oozing wound from the braid" and that "half my hair had been ripped out" of her head in the process.

Several of Curry's cycle 1 cast mates, including Stewart and Giselle Samson, are set to appear in Netflix's upcoming docuseries *Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model*, which* *investigates* *various controversies tied to the show, from body-shaming judges and Banks' insistence on closing a gap in cycle 6 winner Dani Evans' teeth, to photo challenges that tasked models with darkening their skin to portray women of different races.

Adrianne Curry and Tyra Banks on 'ANTM' cycle 1.

The show also includes a big reveal on Banks' part, as the supermodel says in the show that *Top Model* — which hasn't aired a new cycle since 2018 — is coming back for cycle 25 in the near future.

*Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model *debuts Monday on Netflix.

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Source: “EW Reality”