‘ANTM’ trans trailblazer Isis King reflects on TV representation, but ‘was ANTM perfect? No’

Isis King broke barriers for trans models on TV when she joined the main cast of contestants on cycle 11 of Tyra Banks‘ modeling competition series America’s Next Top Model, and now in an exclusive statement to Entertainment Weekly, she’s breaking down her legacy on the classic early-aughts reality show.

In 2008, Banks welcomed King to join the competition in pursuit of a modeling contract worth $100,000, after King impressed the supermodel with her poses as an extra during a separate ANTM shoot centered around homelessness on cycle 10 one year prior. With an invitation to try out for cycle 11, King graduated from living at the Ali Forney Transitional Housing Program and into the ANTM mansion in Los Angeles, becoming the first openly trans contestant in the show’s history.

“I first appeared on ANTM just about 18 years ago and I am still so fascinated by the effect it has had on pop culture. I’m forever grateful for the impact my presence as an open trans woman had on the contestants and the audience,” reads King’s statement to EW. “It pulled the curtain back on a topic that should not have been as ‘controversial’ as it was.”

While Banks and the show’s judges were adamant about highlighting King at a time when the fashion industry typically represented little in terms of diverse forms of beauty, King’s fellow contestants — including Clark Gilmer and Hannah White — were shown making insensitive comments to King regarding her gender.

King performed well during her short time on the show, earning a second-place finish on the first photo challenge, and became a fan-favorite model across a handful of episodes. She was eventually eliminated in 10th place on episode 5, but her pop culture impact was lasting.

King later appeared on a 2008 episode of The Tyra Banks Show, with the titular host introducing King to a surgeon who assisted with the model’s transition, and she later returned to compete on the show’s cycle 17 all-star edition.

Her presence was a landmark for LGBTQ representation on the series, which also featured queer models like Ebony Haith (cycle 1), Kim Stolz (cycle 5), Megan Morris (cycle 7), and Michelle Babin (cycle 7) but even King admits to EW that the show was a difficult experience in select ways.

“Was ANTM perfect? No. Would I have had the same success story without bearing my heart for the world to see, hoping the opportunity redirected me from poverty, and allowed me to travel the world following my dreams as an actress, model, and artist? Probably not,” she finishes, pointing to her career that has since included modeling shoots (including for American Apparel) and acting work (The Bold and the Beautiful, Shameless, When They See Us, The L Word: Generation Q, Good Trouble, Amazon’s With Love, and then a lead role on the Whoopi Goldberg-produced reality show Strut).

Other contestants have echoed King’s sentiment about Top Model’s imperfections. In EW’s 20th anniversary oral history celebrating the show’s two-decade-long impact on culture since its 2003 launch, 14 contestants spoke about their experience on the program, with many highlighting issues from on-air sexual misconduct to the show tasking models with wearing dark face makeup to portray different races in photo challenges.

Banks herself even recently admitted at the 2025 Essence Black Women in Hollywood ceremony that she “said some dumb s—“ on the show, but celebrated “24 cycles of changing the world” in terms of how the fashion industry saw beauty.

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In a statement to EW, a spokesperson for Banks said of the controversial shoots that the intention was to combat an industry where “lighter skin and straight hair were pervasive beauty standards” that “perpetuated deep insecurities within women.” The spokesperson maintained that such shoots were “meant to be a moment celebrating and spotlighting underrepresented ideologies of beauty — textured hair and darker skin — on a global scale.” (Executive producer Ken Mok declined to comment, while representatives for producer Laura Fuest Silva and creative director Jay Manuel did not respond to EW’s multiple requests for comment at the time.)