‘ANTM’ Alum Shandi Sullivan Explains Why She Decided to Share Her Story in Netflix Docuseries
Shandi Sullivan is taking charge of her story.
More than two decades after she appeared in cycle 2 of America’s Next Top Model, Shandi is speaking out about her experience on the competition series and the traumatic moment that was turned into reality TV fodder.
‘America’s Next Top Model’ producer calls Shandi’s ‘cheating scandal’ one of the show’s most memorable moments
Shandi was an awkward 21-year-old Walgreens clerk from Kansas when she landed a coveted spot in the second season of the Tyra Banks-produced show. Cast in the role of the ugly duckling, Shandi blossomed as the show went on, emerging as one of that season’s fan-favorite models. Then came the trip to Milan.
As seen on the show, Shandi and the other three finalists spent an evening with the male scooter drivers/models who’d been hired to escort them around town. An inebriated Shandi had sex with one of the men. The next day, an she called her boyfriend and tearfully confessed to being unfaithful.
The drama made for a can’t-look-away episode of ANTM. But although the incident was framed as a “cheating scandal,” the truth of what happened was much darker, Shandi explains in Netflix’s new docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.
Shandi says she hadn’t eaten or slept heading into the party. She drank a significant amount and ended up in the hot tub with several other people. What followed was not a consensual encounter but a sexual assault.
“I think I had two bottles of wine by myself. I just remember little bits and pieces … We were in the bed,” she says, adding that she “blacked out for a lot of it.”
“I didn’t even feel sex happening, I just knew it was happening. And then I passed out,” she says.
Rather than intervening,, the America’s Next Top Model camera crew filmed the assault. The next day, cameras captured a devasted Shandi telling her boyfriend Eric about the incident and his less-than-sympathetic reaction.
After that, Shandi was done.
“After that happened, I kept demanding, I want to go home. I don’t want to be a part of this anymore,” she recalls, tearing up.
Shandi was in crisis. But for the ANTM producers, her trauma was an opportunity.
“That was, for good or bad, one of the most memorable moments in Top Model,” producer Ken Mok says.
Shandi says someone from ‘ANTM’ should have intervened to stop the assault
For years, Shandi says she blamed herself for what happened. But now, she realizes someone should have stepped in to help her.
“My whole feeling for a long, long time was ‘I did this. I let this happen to me.’ But there were people watching the whole time, and someone should have intervened. Someone should have said, ‘We need to put the cameras down and just go get her,’” she told Rolling Stone. “They facilitated that whole situation with the hopes that something would happen. And thankfully for them, it made amazing television, right?”
The wounds from Shandi’s experience in Milan are still raw decades later. But she felt it was important to open up about what really happened, she explained in an Instagram post.
“Welp the documentary is out and now you know more of my story…after all of the years the Top Model girls and what we went through were never forgotten,” she wrote, adding that she “smiled through it” after she returned home and waited for the episode to air.
“Knowing that my friends, my family, Eric’s family, and strangers were going to know what I had done, what happened to me,” she wrote. “At the age of 43, I continue to struggle with it; always smiling. That’s why I took this opportunity. Knowing that Tyra didn’t have control over my narrative, that the director and producers here had my back…that’s why I did it.”
“I did it for me,” she added. “Because I mattered and I still do! The love I have felt today has been immense. Thank you to everyone that heard me.”
How to get help: In the U.S., call the RAINN National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 to connect with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.
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