Travis Scott To SCOTUS
Using Rap Lyrics To Give Death Sentence Ain’t It!!!

Published
March 11, 2026
9:47 AM PDT

The legacy — and controversy — surrounding America’s Next Top Model is at the center of Netflix and E!’s documentaries, but how do the specials compare?

America’s Next Top Model, which ran from 2003 to 2018, followed aspiring models as they competed to receive a modeling contract, a fashion spread, a cover in a major magazine and a cosmetics campaign.

After Hulu made episodes available in 2020, America’s Next Top Model received backlash for its insensitive modeling challenges that featured concepts such as race-swapping, murder and eating disorders.

“I didn’t think it was controversial. I was in my own little bubble in my head,” Tyra Banks said in a rare comment for Netflix’s Reality Check docuseries, which premiered in February 2026. “Looking at the show now through the 2020 lens, it is an issue and I understood 100 percent why.”

Related: ‘America’s Next Top Model’ Contestants React to Shocking Netflix Doc

America’s Next Top Model’s most memorable contestants aren’t staying quiet about their experience on TV. After more than 24 seasons, the reality show is being put under the microscope in a new Netflix docuseries titled Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. While host Tyra Banks and judges J. Alexander, Jay Manuel and Nigel Barker […]

Banks hinted at ANTM returning after she addressed the controversy.

“Looking at that show through the lens of today, it’s like, ‘Why did you do that?’ I thank you for that. That is the only way you change. That is the only way you get better is by somebody calling you out on your s***,” Banks said. “It is important. I want to let you know that I want you guys to be just as open as I am now by getting called on my s*** by when somebody calls you out on yours. Because that day will come and continue to evolve. Because that’s what we’re all doing.”

E’s Dirty Rotten Scandals, meanwhile, premiered one month later with different former contestants and participants. Keep scrolling to see how Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model and Dirty Rotten Scandals are similar — and how they differ:

Who Participated in Each Docuseries

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model premiered in February 2026 with contestants who opened up about their experiences behind the scenes, which included discrimination, sexual assault and more shocking claims. Whitney Thompson, Giselle Samson, Shannon Stewart, Shandi Sullivan, Danielle Evans and Keenyah Hill were some of the alums who weighed in on their experience.

Dirty Scandals, meanwhile, featured Lisa D’Amato, Jaslene Gonzalez, Sarah Hartshorne, Brittany Brower and Angelea Preston.

Cycle 4 finalist Keenyah Hill sat down to speak with both Netflix and E! for their respective docs.

Related: Where ‘Top Model’ Alums Stand With Tyra Banks After Offscreen Backlash

Netflix’s America’s Next Top Model docuseries revealed where Tyra Banks stands with many former contestants after they offered their unfiltered opinions of the show. Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, streaming now, features interviews from alums Whitney Thompson, Giselle Samson, Shannon Stewart, Shandi Sullivan, Danielle Evans and Keenyah Hill. New confessionals with executive producer […]

Tyra Banks’ Side of the Story

Reality Check incorporated Tyra Banks’ perspective alongside fellow executive producer Ken Mok and former judges Jay Manuel, Miss J. Alexander and Nigel Barker.

“I wanted to fight against the fashion industry. One day, this idea just hit me. What if I created a show where you saw what it took to become a model,” Banks explained. “And for this show to represent not all white, not all skinny and to just show all the differences and all the different types of beauties. I had a feeling that I was gonna change the beauty world.”

Banks wasn’t interviewed for Dirty Rotten Scandals — neither was Mok.

Incorporating the Judges Into the Narrative

Speaking of former judges, Jay Manuel, Miss J. Alexander and Nigel Barker sat down for individual interviews for Netflix’s version. Dirty Rotten Scandals, meanwhile, featured insight from judge Janice Dickinson — who was only mentioned in Reality Check.

Director Daniel Sivan told Tudum in February 2026 that he wanted to interview Dickinson, but she had commitments to a different documentary.

By Robert Scucci
| Published 36 seconds ago

Every man on Earth has one ridiculous fantasy that he clings to because the possibility of it ever happening gives him something to live for. Dane Cook insists every guy wants to be involved in an elaborate heist. The Farrelly Brothers’ Hall Pass suggests every man wants to stay faithfully married to his wife, but would love to sleep with other women if only his better half would allow it.

Both of these scenarios are so far-fetched that they will probably never happen. If they do, you’re likely ending up in jail or divorce court, and for good reason.

The most egregious male fantasy, however, involves raining hate on a barista because all you want is a simple cup of black coffee and they refuse to sell it to you.

In this fantasy, which I call the coffee con, the conversation escalates until people either scream or come to blows because they just want coffee with a capital C. The barista is convinced they should try something new and refuses to take no for an answer.

Denis Leary famously ranted about how hard it is to get a cup of coffee flavored coffee. Tom Segura had a similar bit in his Completely Normal special, along with an epic showdown on his Netflix series Bad Thoughts. Sam Loudermilk leans into the same setup with his cashier, and even Dennis Reynolds from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has his moment trying to order a tea without any boba in it.

The result is always the same. A middle-aged dude complaining about how everything sucks now because he can’t get his bold-roasted cup of bean water.

The Coffee Con

The coffee con is the ultimate male fantasy, and I’m here to dismantle it because I am a black coffee drinker. Hot, iced, cold brew, it doesn’t matter. I have never once run into this problem.

I order my coffee. It’s poured into a cup. I pay the cashier. I leave and become a jittery mess.

I am a faulty organic machine that converts Frappuccinos into debilitating, clear-my-afternoon levels of digestive distress, so I avoid the fancy drinks at all costs even though they’re delicious. Not only has a barista never refused to sell me black coffee, the easiest beverage to make on the entire menu, the idea that they would is preposterous.

Having worked at an extremely busy convention center café, I never once stared cockeyed at somebody for wanting the simplest thing on the menu. Here’s a trade secret you may not know: baristas don’t work on commission.

It doesn’t matter if they’re pouring black coffee into a cup or juggling an espresso machine, blender, syrup pumps, and milk frother all at once. They make the same amount of money either way.

It’s simple math, and nowhere in their employee handbook does it say they have to act like this.

Denis Leary’s Straw Man Rant, And What’s Really At Play Here

Famous joke thief Denis Leary epically rants about the coffee con in his 1997 stand-up special, Lock ‘N Load. In the eight-minute bit that begins with “Is it impossible to get a cup of coffee-flavored coffee anymore in this country?”, he launches into everything wrong with the modern world.

I don’t think coffee is the primary focus of his rage.

Coffee is just the catalyst. If you read between the lines, there is something much sadder going on. He’s upset about the new guard pushing his generation toward irrelevance, one mochaccino, chocaccino, frappuccino, cappuccino, rapaccinio, and alpaccino at a time.

Leary’s true colors show during a side rant about his trip to 7-Eleven. He goes to great lengths describing the clerk as an over-tattooed, under-educated, tongue-pierced, dressed-like-a-gangster Gen X burnout who is somehow keeping him from his precious black coffee when he’s not huffing paint and drooling on himself. He mocks gang signs, makes a Wu-Tang reference that was already dated in 1997, and demolishes this fictional villain who is just trying to do his job.

The entire bit is a straw man argument. The 7-Eleven employee sounds like the biggest idiot on the planet when the far more likely explanation is that Leary filled his own cup with the wrong flavor, which finished with a hint of maple syrup, and was mad at himself because he forgot his grandpa glasses when looking at the self-serve carafes.

Is Denis Leary really mad about coffee? Or is he mad that the times are changing and blaming it on the youth he encounters?

Black coffee is a staple beverage at every café, truck stop, and diner in America. The only real change is that there are more ways to drink coffee now than ever before. Leary’s got the same energy as the crotchety university professor explaining to students that Vinyl LPs are “those big black things we used to listen to music on.” It’s the same attitude that criticizes kids for not learning cursive even though they had no say in how the curriculum was structured.

It’s Not The Kids’ Fault

Meanwhile, on planet Earth in the year 2026, you can walk into almost any café and order black coffee without pushback. I used to be a caffeine junkie back in college (I still am, but I used to be too!). It got so bad that, like a problem drinker, I strategically planned my day around entering different coffee shops at different times so I didn’t look like somebody who needed an intervention.

I knew when the shifts changed. Like a chain smoker lighting the next cigarette with the still-smoldering corpse of the previous one, I was mainlining offensive amounts of coffee into my body. Even then, the most egregious exchange I ever experienced was the barista asking one simple question: “Would you like room for milk?”

The more insidious problem that the coffee con reveals is that guys aged anywhere from 35 to death are afraid of how the times are changing. Their sacred preferences are being undermined by the next generation, waiting to take their place, and that scares the crap out of them. Or, as a 37-year-old, I should say, us.

Dennis Reynolds’ tea shop meltdown in “Dennis Takes a Mental Health Day” sums this up perfectly. He’s not angry because he can’t get a simple cup of herbal tea. He’s angry because the place doesn’t take cash, requires an app that tracks his consumption habits, and the employee standing in front of him can’t process the transaction without technological help because “the system won’t allow it.”

The fear of aging out is real, and everybody copes with it differently. Dennis is right to be distressed, but it’s not the tea place’s fault.

Men of a certain age distill that rage into the cup of coffee they want but assure you they can’t have anymore. In Loudermilk, when our hero runs into the same situation, he mocks the barista’s vocal fry. It’s hilarious because nobody should talk like that unless they have a medical condition. But it’s also telling because he’s not actually mad, he’s afraid.

Tom Segura takes it even further, going on a murder spree when too much milk is added to his iced coffee despite requesting light milk, resulting in a sequence of cinematic violence worthy of a John Wick movie. If anything, he’s riding the hate train against poor customer service, but coffee is still the fuel that keeps his anger firing on all cylinders. 

A False Equivalency At Play 

In all of these coffee con examples, front-line employees are belittled because their customer refuses to become a relic of the past. They just want good old-fashioned coffee, and nothing makes sense to them anymore.

They’re the Boomers who “don’t do email” and get replaced by three interns, and the Millennials who think AI is coming for their jobs, but refuse to learn the new tech, rendering them obsolete. It’s the same anxiety no matter how old you are, and the coffee con is the most distilled and aromatic way to express it.

But I assure you, and this is important, that the classics never die.

Thirty, forty, or even one hundred years from now, when society collapses for reasons of our own doing, you will still probably be able to get a cup of black coffee.

I promise you it’s going to be okay.

Peacock, show Rob Rausch the money!

The Traitors season 4 winner said during a Tuesday, March 10, appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show that he has yet to receive his $220,800 grand prize after bluffing and “murdering” his way to victory.

“They still haven’t paid me,” Rausch, 27, confirmed to host Kelly Clarkson when she brought up the show’s six-figure prize pot.

Although Rausch has yet to see the money in his bank account, that didn’t stop him from making good on his promise to buy runner-up Maura Higgins a Birkin bag after he deceived her in the season 4 finale.

Advertisement

Related: ‘The Traitors’ Season 4 Finalists Break Down That Savage Finale

Are you a Faithful or a Traitor — or just obsessed with Peacock’s latest reality TV megahit? Here at Us Weekly, we’re 100 percent faithful to the only game show that pits Housewives against “gamers” and actual Olympians, with hosting duties carried out by the ever-glamorous Alan Cumming (who’s won four Emmys for his trouble). […]

Rausch revealed himself as a Traitor in the final episode of Traitors season 4 after he and Higgins — a Faithful — agreed to end the game. Per the rules of the game show, if the last celebrities standing are Faithfuls, they split the prize money, but if any Traitors are left when the game ends, the Traitors take all the money.

Rausch presented Higgins, 35, with a red Birkin bag on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen earlier this month, much to her delight. “This is my win. I knew I’d have my moment,” she said.

Rausch confirmed that fellow Traitor Lisa Rinna helped him purchase the bag, which she detailed in a recent TikTok video.

“Let’s talk about the Birkin bag!” Rinna, 62, said in her Sunday, March 8, social media post. “I’m so excited about the bag. I’m so excited that we got to come full circle. You can see how happy Maura is.”

“It was so fun helping Rob. My friends Isaac Boots and Jeffery helped with that connection because they had the connection in New York, so we were able to make that happen quickly,” the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum explained, noting that they would have otherwise had to have sourced the bag from Paris. “It would have taken a bit longer.”

“It all worked out so magically and then for Rob to give it to Maura on Watch What Happens Live. Just tickled me,” she said. “All of it has brought me so much joy.”

Elsewhere on Tuesday’s Kelly Clarkson Show, Rausch gave an update on what’s next for him after Clarkson encouraged him to go into acting following his deceptively good performance on The Traitors.

“Before Traitors, I would have said, ‘Hell no, I’m not doing that.’ But maybe I could do it,” he said. “At this point, all I can think about is getting home to my family. Spring is coming up. It’s my favorite time of the year. It’s about to get real green in Alabama.”

Kelly Clarkson is lifting the lid on her American Idol prize more than 23 years after she won the first season.

The singer and talk show host revealed on the Tuesday, March 10, episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show that she never received the car she was promised as part of her prize. She made the revelation after The Traitors season 4 winner Rob Rausch, her guest on the episode, said he had yet to receive his $220,800 grand prize for his victory.

“I relate to this so hardcore,” Clarkson, 43, told Rausch, 27. “You probably weren’t alive when I was on American Idol, but I was literally on the show, and they were like, ‘Oh, you win a million dollars,’ or whatever. No, you didn’t. They lied. You did not, no. It was like a million dollars worth of investment in you.” (The American Idol prize at the time was a recording contract worth $1 million.)

Aside from the recording contract, Clarkson said she was also promised a car, but it never materialized.

Advertisement

Related: How ‘American Idol’ Prizes Have Changed Through the Years

Winning American Idol has been a dream come true for many singers, but the prizes have changed a lot over the years. Kelly Clarkson was crowned the singing competition’s inaugural winner in 2002. She reportedly walked away with a $1 million prize and a record deal with RCA Records, per Parade. In addition to the […]

“And then they said you get a car, and I needed it ‘cos my car is bashed in and I couldn’t afford the [insurance] deductible. And then, no! I did not get a car!” Clarkson said.

“And then Clay Aiken, who didn’t win the second season, got a car — and [so did] his mom!” she said, referring to the American Idol season 2 runner-up. “I was like, ‘What the f***?’ I remember Clay telling me that second season … he was like, ‘Yeah, they gave my mom one.’ I was like, ‘I’m gonna actually kick your ass right now.’”

American Idol winner-turned-judge Carrie Underwood previously opened up about receiving a Ford Mustang convertible following her season 4 victory back in 2005. During a March 2023 interview on Today’s Country Radio With Kelleigh Bannen, Underwood, 43, confirmed she still had the car.

“I do still have the car that I won when I won American Idol. So I have my blue Mustang,” said the singer, who is now part of the Idol judging panel with Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie.

“It always makes me want to drive it more, because it was such a pivotal point in my life,” she said. “That was the car that I was driving around when I first moved to Tennessee, and I’m very, very glad I still have that car.”

More recently, season 16 winner Maddie Poppe revealed in a 2022 interview with Business Insider that she received $250,000 for winning her 2018 victory.

“You do get $250,000, but not really because of taxes,” Poppe told the outlet. “And you get half of it before you complete your record, and then the second half you get after you complete the record. So it’s just like an advance from the record deal, but I’m pretty sure I have to recoup it.”

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 8 seconds ago

Stranger Things may be over, but Netflix doesn’t have to worry about finding a replacement. One Piece Season 2 is proof that the streaming giant has the next big thing already ready to go. The first two episodes of the new season, subtitled Into the Grand Line, prove it’s not only the best live-action anime adaptation of all time, but one of the best shows of this decade. The new season is bigger, better, and by compressing the anime and manga arcs into one or two episodes, the pacing finally matches Monkey D. Luffy’s boundless enthusiasm. 

One Piece: Into The Grand Line Picks Up Right Where Season 1 Left Off

“The Beginning and The End” starts off the season by bringing the Straw Hat Pirates, their captain Luffy (Inaki Godoy), the navigator Nami (Emily Rudd), the greatest swordsman alive, Zorro (Mackenyu), the sharpshooter Usop (Jacob Romero Gibson), and master chef Sanji (Taz Skylar) to Loguetown, the last vestige of civilization before entering the Grand Line. Immediately, Netflix’s budget is on full display within the wildly colorful city where everyone, from a fishmonger to a swordsmith, looks like they stepped off the set of a completely different series. Even in live-action, One Piece looks like an anime, and the over-the-top shonen plot has been mostly left intact. 

Returning villains from Season 1, Buggy (Jeff Ward) and a slimmed-down Alvida (Ilia Isorel Paulino) ambush Luffy while he’s visiting Gold Roger’s execution site. Luffy finds himself bound and on top of the execution site with his life on the line, and in the face of death, he laughs. He can’t help but proudly announce that he will become the King of the Pirates. Nothing, not even a blade to his throat, can dull Luffy’s enthusiasm for and love of life. It inspires some, and, in the case of the newly introduced Marine Captain Smoker (Callum Kerr), it terrifies him. Smoker recognizes that Luffy is the heir to Gold Roger. 

In the anime, he’s an exaggerated character in an exaggerated world, which is why, when fans knew Season 2 would adapt the “Reverse Mountain” arc, there was some concern about how they’d show a river flowing up a mountain and the giant whale lurking at the bottom. Episode 2, “Good Whale Hunting,” is all the evidence anyone needs that One Piece succeeds where most adaptations falter. It steers into the ridiculousness with all the joy and reckless abandon of the Going Merry’s crew heading straight down Reverse Mountain. 

The New Gold Standard For Adaptations

The beauty of One Piece is that it’s the type of series that defies Netflix’s unofficial “second screen” viewing policy. It’s why Stranger Things Season 5 rehashed the plot over and over again, and characters delivered blatant exposition to one another. There are brief asides, such as Zoro’s comment about how Laboon must be a girl whale after Nami points out the uvula, or Usop’s excited retelling of his adventures to Kaya through a messenger snail, that, well, seems to be a bit exaggerated. Eichiiro Oda, creator of One Piece, worked on the series to the extent that every single change, character outfit, casting choice, and even lines of dialogue, had to receive his approval, and it shows. 

One Piece looks like the anime, it sounds like the anime, and it possesses the spirit of the anime. Fans of The Witcher will look at this series and think about what could have been if that series had received a fraction of the love and care devoted to One Piece. As with the first season, you don’t even have to have seen the anime or read a single page of the manga to appreciate the show on its own merits. It’s an entry point to the world of anime without the burden of going through over a thousand episodes. 

Netflix released every episode of One Piece: Into the Grand Line on March 10, so if you want, you could binge the entire adventure in one go. You could also take your time and savor another trip to the world of pirates in search of legendary treasure. However you choose to watch it, make sure you do, because One Piece may be the most popular anime in the world, but with the success of Season 2, it’s going to become the next big thing.