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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.”

My denim had a good run this winter, but my legs are ready to breathe this spring. However, when the weather is in that awkward, sunny-but-chilly phase, I always stress about what pants to wear. Jeans are too thick and stiff, but it’s not quite warm enough outside for shorts. And don’t even get me started on leggings! If you’ve run into the same dilemma and crave pants that actually let you move but still look polished, you’re in very good company.

I scoured Amazon for loose and elevated spring pants and landed on 12 must-see pairs. Think wide legs, relaxed draping and fabrics that hang beautifully without looking sloppy. The best part? You don’t need a designer budget to pull it off. These picks strike that sweet spot between comfort and “I clearly have my life together” — and are all under $50.  Let’s get into it!

Loose and Elevated Spring Pants for Under $50

1. My Favorite: These stretchy, high-waist barrel pants in army green hit right at the ankle for a cropped, cool silhouette. The baggy boyfriend fit plus pockets make them an instant wardrobe MVP.

2. Spring Staple: Finding dress pants that don’t feel like a punishment is hard. These stretchy, wide-leg trousers have a clever double waistband that looks structured but moves with you all day long.

3. Loose Linen: A cotton linen blend keeps these palazzo pants breathable when temps climb. The flowy, wide-leg cut with pockets screams easy, breezy spring.

4. Boho-Chic: When you want that linen-like look without fussing over dry cleaning, these brick red palazzo pants deliver. The high waist and flowy wide leg give you a put-together boho vibe with zero effort.

5. Office-Approved: Stiff work pants are the worst. These loose pleated trousers have a high elastic waist that stretches comfortably, while the long, flowy cut keeps you looking like the best-dressed person in the office.

Related: The Most Flattering Wide-Leg Pants for Every Shape — From $20

Wide-leg pants are some of the most flattering bottoms you can own, whether you’re curvy, petite, tall or somewhere in between. To make the search for the perfect pair easier, we rounded up 15 wide-leg pants that deliver on fit, comfort and style — no tailoring tricks required. From pull-on styles that feel polished enough […]

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6. Quite the Charmer: A tie-waist detail creates a slimming effect that gives these loose wide-leg pants a boutique-style look. The comfy high waist and pockets seal the deal.

7. Go for Gingham: A green and white gingham pattern makes these flowy, wide-leg pants a spring standout for under $30. The elastic high waist keeps them comfy for all-day wear.

8. Free and Flowy: Slip these floral palazzo pants on for your next beach vacation, and you’ve got a complete outfit with minimal packing. The apricot-and-black print can be dressed up with gold hoops.

9. Spring Sweats: Regular sweatpants look sloppy outside the house, but these lightweight palazzo pants give you that same cozy elastic-waist feel with a much chicer wide-leg shape.

10. Better Than Denim: Jeans that pinch and dig are nobody’s friend. These acid-wash wide-leg pants give you that denim look with a stretchy drawstring waist that actually lets you sit comfortably.

11. Shopper-Loved: A high waist is everything when you want a flowy pant that still defines your shape. These army green palazzo pants hit that sweet spot between polished and relaxed.

12. Everyday Essential: Some days you need pants that ask nothing of you. These drawstring palazzo pants in light gray are loose, comfy and have deep pockets, but the wide-leg shape still looks intentional and put together.

Malika Haqq and Khadijah Haqq have puzzled fans after posting a photo of them kissing on the lips in celebration of their 43rd birthday.

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Malika Haqq Haqq & Khadijah Haqq Post Photo Of Them Kissing On The Lips In Celebration Of Their Birthday

On Tuesday, March 10, Khadijah Haqq took to Instagram to share a photo of herself and Malika Haqq standing in front of a sunset while surrounded by candles and greenery. Additionally, the pair posed with one of the twins holding the other’s face as they kissed on the lips.

“H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y M A L I K A 40-thrWE💋,” Khadijah captioned the photo as Malika reposted the photo via her own Instagram Story with the reply. “Happy Birthday @foreverkhadijah I love you… It’s US forever [pink heart emoji]”

Check out the photo below.

The Twins Puzzle Fans With Apparent Birthday Celebration Post

Internet users immediately shared puzzled reactions to the photo in TSR’s comment section.

Before Malika Haqq Haqq & Khadijah Haqq Posted Photo Of Them Kissing On The Lips, One Of The Twins Made Sentimental Headlines

As The Shade Room previously reported, before Malika and Khadijah Haqq made present headlines, in March 2025, Malika shared footage of her sentimental birthday surprise for her and O.T. Genasis’ 5-year-old son, Ace. The clip ultimately prompted tears from social media users.

RELATED: Awww! Malika Haqq Trends After Posting Sentimental Footage Of Her Birthday Surprise For Her & O.T. Genasis’ Son (WATCH)