A look back at Tyra Banks’ career ahead of Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model

By Lara Owen, PA

As Netflix prepares to air Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks is once again at the centre of the conversation.

For many, she was a boundary-breaking supermodel in the 1990s before turning her success into a television empire. For others, she is now inseparable from the reality series that reshaped – and, some argue, distorted – perceptions of the modelling world.

Her career, spanning more than three decades, traces the changing face of fashion, the rise of personal branding and entrepreneurship, and the boom of reality television itself.

Early life: Modelling and acting (1990s-2005)

Banks, now 52, began modelling at 15 after being rejected by several agencies, an experience she has often said shaped her resilience, telling Glamour magazine: “There was a door that was locked because I was a young black model and the first six agencies I knocked at said no – I think four of the six said, ‘We already have a black girl.'”

But by the early 1990s, she had built a reputation on international runways and pivoted into lingerie and swimwear work, a move that brought her to a wider and more mainstream audience. This shift placed her in front of audiences far beyond the fashion capitals of Paris and Milan.

In 1996, she became the first Black woman to appear on the covers of GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue – both landmark moments for representation in established fashion media.

The following year, she became one of the first Black models to sign a contract to become a Victoria’s Secret Angel, a role she held from 1997 to 2005 and which cemented her household-name status. Her presence in these spaces helped redefine who could be seen as a mainstream beauty icon at a time when the industry remained overwhelmingly white.

Alongside modelling, Banks pursued acting, appearing in The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air in 1993, making her film debut in Higher Learning and later starring in Life-Size with a young Lindsay Lohan and Coyote Ugly.

Television and media empire (2003-2016)

In 2003, Banks created, produced and hosted America’s Next Top Model, bringing the modelling industry to primetime reality television. The show ran for 24 seasons over 15 years and spawned numerous international versions, becoming a defining part of 2000s pop culture. For many viewers, it offered a glimpse into the mechanics of the fashion world, albeit through the heightened lens of reality TV.

While the show became a cornerstone in the emergence of reality television, in recent years, America’s Next Top Model has been re-examined by both the show’s producers and contestants.

“You’re not thin enough, you’re not thin enough,” Shannon Stewart, the runner-up from season one, recalls being told in the trailer for the new Netflix documentary.

Banks also acknowledges in the trailer that some moments “went too far”, while maintaining that the intention was to create opportunities within the industry.

Following the success at the time of America’s Next Top Model, Banks followed with The Tyra Banks Show, which aired from 2005 to 2010 and earned two Daytime Emmy Awards, further broadening her appeal beyond fashion audiences and into mainstream daytime television.

Banks expanded her brand with the publication of her novel Modelland in 2010, which became a New York Times bestseller, and completed a certificate programme at Harvard Business School in 2012. In 2015, she co-hosted lifestyle talk show FABLife and launched beauty ventures, positioning herself firmly as an entrepreneur.

Reinvention and return (2017-present)

Banks has continued to evolve her on-screen presence. She hosted America’s Got Talent from 2017 to 2018 and later fronted Dancing With The Stars between 2020 and 2022. In 2018, she co-authored Perfect Is Boring with her mother. These projects kept her visible to a new generation of television viewers.

Banks also added another chapter to her portfolio as the founder of Smize & Dream, an ice cream brand inspired by childhood memories of enjoying treats with her mother. The boutique brand launched in 2020 and has operated pop-ups in cities including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Dubai and Sydney. The venture reflected her long-standing interest in branding and experiential retail.

In 2025, Banks introduced a novel product widely dubbed “hot ice cream” – a warm, sippable dessert-drink hybrid called Hot Mama – through her Sydney flagship store. The concept, which Banks describes as a “culinary contradiction” that defies easy categorisation, quickly became a viral topic online, with reactions ranging from intrigue to confusion.

In 2024, Banks returned to the fashion world, re-signing with IMG Models and walking in the revived Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show – a symbolic full-circle moment more than two decades after first becoming an Angel.