Tyra Banks: ‘Thank God people know me as more than just a mannequin’
March 25, 2020The straight-talking host of Americas Next Top Model has plans for a global empire. Is the world ready?
Oh my God, look at you! Tyra Banks shouts from down the hallway. Im in the supermodel-turned-supermoguls office in Santa Monica, but Id been so distracted (looking at my phone, mortifyingly) that I hadnt noticed her approach. Youre like this! she hoots, imitating my exhausted jetlagged stance by assuming the pose of a marionette whose puppeteer has let go of the strings.
Under normal circumstances, being mocked by one of the worlds most famous supermodels would feel close to bullying. But Banks as she always does on her hugely successful TV show, Americas Next Top Model makes herself the joke, tripping over (Whoops!) and commiserating about our mutual fatigue. Im like, just give me some snacks, you know what Im saying? she cackles. Shes wearing a blazer over a dark T-shirt, a necklace with a big B dangling from it, dark trousers and boots. Her hair is long and auburn, and when I tell her how much I like the colour she makes a hearty laugh: Its a wig! Cant you tell? We walk into a boardroom and sit opposite one another. This doesnt feel very intimate, she says regretfully. In person, Banks exudes less of the uber-confident, camp big sister vibe that has made her such an endearing TV presenter, and is more like an eager-to-please friend.
These days, the term supermodel is slapped on any model who gets an advertising campaign. But Banks really was one and back in the 1990s, too, when the term had actual heft. Hell, she was even in George Michaels Too Funky video, alongside Linda Evangelista and Nadja Auermann, and you cant get more supermodel (or 1990s) than that. She had a long contract with Victorias Secret and was, most famously, the first black woman to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrateds Swimsuit Issue and GQ. But Banks never saw any of that as the end goal.
Plan for the end at the beginning, she tells me, solemnly. (Banks often talks in platitudes on Americas Next Top Model Never dull your shine for someone else; Your flaws are awesome: thats why theyre flawsome and this is no mere onscreen shtick.) She learned this particular slogan from her mother, Carolyn London. London, who accompanied her then teenage daughter on most of her fashion jobs, would point to the other models and say, Look around. Wheres so-and-so? She was hot everywhere last year, and now? No one cares about her. Thats gonna be you one day.
And I would think, oh my God, thats so evil! says Banks. But then I started to book less and less fashion shows and shed say, You see? But its not you, its your product, and now theyre looking for a different product. So you can either figure out how to strategise and improve, or you can become a new product. (Perhaps the reason the rest of us dont have $90m in the bank, as Banks allegedly does, is because our mothers never taught us to strategise our product when we were young.)
Banks strategised and lifted herself out of the cul-de-sac of modelling and on to the expansive global stage of celebrity, via the medium of TV. She hosted her own chatshow, The Tyra Banks Show (five seasons, six Emmys, from 2005 to 2010), which sparked endless The Next Oprah headlines. And, of course, she made Americas Next Top Model (24 seasons and counting), the talent contest which she coined, produces and hosts, and which introduced the world to modelling tricks such as smize (smile with just your eyes) and booty tooch (sticking your butt out). There was also an extremely brief pop career, which Banks describes, not entirely incorrectly, as a hot mess I realised my gift was not my singing voice, but my talking voice.
Americas Next Top Model crested the wave of reality TV talent shows, arriving the year after The X Factor, and is now shown in more than 170 countries. But some have pointed out that it hasnt, actually, produced any top models. Banks dismisses this, insisting that many former contestants are now appearing in fashion shows and, anyway, her girls have had to overcome the industrys initial snobbery against reality TV. So thank God for Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid and Bella Hadid, and all the other girls who came from reality television shows, because theyve now made it OK, she says.
As with Heidi Klum another model turned omnipresent TV star and judge of Americas Got Talent there is now a generation that has known Banks only as a TV celebrity, and that delights her: Thank God they know me as more than just being a mannequin, she grins. But ModelLand, her latest venture currently on hold until the Covid-19 crisis has passed is what she hopes will be her real legacy. I look at Walt Disney and what hes done with Disneyland and how it continues for ever and ever. And the next person like that is JK Rowling, what shes done in creating the Potter universe. I want that with ModelLand, Banks says solemnly.
She has been planning ModelLand, which takes its name from the title of her decidedly weird 2011 young adult sci-fi-ish novel, for almost a decade. Reviewing the book for the feminist magazine Bitch, Ann-Derrick Gaillot wrote, This book promotes self-esteem and confidence in girls, [but] it is less than empowering since it is all to a depressing consumerist end. Undaunted by the negative reviews, Banks has used the book as inspiration for what she is determined will be her greatest achievement, even if nobody else really understands what it is. Her explanations in previous interviews havent helped: From the beginning, I wanted ModelLand to go beyond just a place to go to, but to be a place to feel emotion, she told Variety last year, prompting feminist website jezebel.com to run a piece headlined Tyra Banks to Launch ModelLand, Whatever the Hell That Means.
Well, I dont want to give it away, she smiles now.
Sure, but can she give some details?
ModelLand is kind of like Harry Potter meets Americas Next Top Model meets Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory meets Disney and you know Black Panther? she begins, and continues to talk about ModelLand without pause for no exaggeration 14 minutes. Reader, I desperately tried to follow it, but you try making sense of sentences like, So its an alternate universe called Ozonia, which is comprised of six different provinces, and each province is demarcated by different weather, and each of them makes the fashion and beauty of the world.
Banks has long been an outspoken campaigner against the fashion industrys narrow idea of beauty, but at the point when she started to talk about the uprise in ModelLand against fashions tyranny, specifying that it was capitalised UpRiSe, I started to tune out. My objective for ModelLand is for people to come in and their jaw to drop, and say, Tyra has lost her goddamn mind. This bitch is crazy! she concludes triumphantly.
Beyond the bonkers storyline, ModelLand sounds like a giant mall (an elevated integrated shopping experience, as Banks puts it) in Santa Monica, where people can live the modelling fantasy via personalised makeovers, fancy photoshoots and fashion shows. The intention, she says, is to teach people that the fashion industry wants to make us feel insecure and buy products, so its really an economy type of thing. ModelLand, by contrast, celebrates all kinds of beauty: You may be 50 years old, you may have cellulite, you may have a big forehead or you may have freckles all over your face. We will show that you can smize and you can slay that runway, she says. You wont, she says earnestly, be forced to buy any products the ModelLand team then recommends for your cellulite and freckles. But if you do, it will heighten the experience.
Well, Im sure ModelLand will shift some mascaras. But how about, instead of arguing that the industry should expand its beauty standards, which is never going to happen, Banks told girls that how they look isnt important? But it is important, 100%, she interrupts before I finish. Like, right now, Im looking at things about you that my eyes are just naturally attracted to. Im looking at your hair, its parted on the side, and its beautiful because you have a high, square-shape forehead. Theres a reason you chose that dress because you want to look in the mirror and say, You know what, this dress makes me feel nice.
Actually, I chose it because I cant be bothered to lose my postpartum weight and this is one of the few dresses that fit, I say. But you still chose that dress over another one, she says. I teach personal branding at Stanford, and one of the things I do with my students is I redo their LinkedIn photo, because research shows that certain things in that photo get you that interview. We say these things dont matter, but a lot of research shows that it does.
Banks has a knack for owning other peoples criticisms of her and turning them to her advantage. When she was a couture model she was told she was too curvy and needed to lose 20lbs; instead, she took the lucrative route of becoming a Victorias Secret model. When a tabloid published unflattering photos of her in a swimsuit in 2007, she appeared on her chatshow in the suit and, to the delight of her audience, told her critics to kiss my fat ass. Today she brings up, apropos of nothing, that she has put on 30lbs from the stress of working on ModelLand.
I can hide it, because my neck is small, and my wrists and ankles are small. But I have some rolls on my back now Im not used to that. And my ankles are hurting because Im carrying too much weight for my bones. Plus, I got grey hairs popping up under this wig. And look, I got my first wrinkle, she says, leaning across the table and scrunching up her face to produce one, barely visible, line at the top of her nose. Similarly, Banks talks about how curvy she was as a model, when the truth is she was always incredibly thin: such chat might tick the relatable box, but its a pretty relative field.
How do these recent physical changes feel, given she has always made her livelihood from her looks? It doesnt make me unhappy, but it makes me feel like I need to deal [with the weight] before I get unhealthy, she says.
And is she reaching for the Botox to sort out her nonexistent wrinkle?
Not yet! But you know, I havent cracked a lot yet, so ask me again when it cracks.
She has recently returned to modelling because she felt like a hypocrite for having retired from Victorias Secret in 2005. I wanted to leave before they kicked me out because of my age, she says (she was 32). But now that Im older than ever, and thicker than ever, and Im saying beauty knows no age and size, I wanted to put my money where my mouth is.
Banks talks proudly of her association with Victorias Secret. They never told me to lose weight, she says, describing it as a company that helps women feel more beautiful. And yet for years the brand was best known for its annual fashion show in which supermodels including Banks walked in their underwear down the runway to the delight of male celebrities in the audience, including the predictable likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Bieber and Adam Levine. Banks says she found it empowering: My ass was thicker [than other models] and I was the only black model [in the show], so I knew what that meant to my community and the world as a whole. So I had a whole different thing going on, she says.
These days, the brand is very much on a downward trajectory, not helped by reports that models were being sexually harassed by former executive Ed Razek. Razek denies the allegations, but had already drawn fire after a Vogue 2018 interview, in which he said he wouldnt include plus-size or transgender models in Victorias Secret campaigns.
It makes me sad, Banks says now. Victorias Secret dont pay me any more, but I still feel an affinity to the company. The model I was back then could not work for them now, because [they would say] I was too thick [fat], she says, implying that Victorias Secret has changed, when the truth is it hasnt, and the times have. Surely, I say, she must have seen the 2017 shows in which the models wore Native American headdresses?
No, I havent seen the shows lately, she interrupts firmly. But I think [the company] will change because they have to, and that will help a lot of people feel more accepted.
With the launch of Americas Next Top Model in 2003, and again with ModelLand, Banks has been bringing the model experience to the masses, promising that anyone even those of us with high, square-shaped foreheads can be a model, if only in Bankss world. Although this has been very lucrative for her, its never made much sense to me: Banks knows better than anyone that its absurd for modelling to be seen as the supreme goal for women after all, she used it as a stepping stone to something bigger (and better). It can still be a stepping stone for everybody, she insists.
But ModelLand and Top Model pitch the job as a form of ultimate validation, I say.
Im a realist, and Im not going to sit here and lie, and say that a young girl doesnt want to look in that mirror and feel good, she says, which is of course true, but it is also different from saying they should aspire to be a model. After all, empowering Victorias Secret shows aside, Banks didnt have that great a time when she was a model.
She started when she was 15, a skinny African American girl from a broken home, and was soon booked to walk for the highest of high fashion shows: Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, Christian Dior. Back then I was very shy and all Thank you, OK. I was a bit intimidated by the [fashion] world, where everything seemed very over-the-top and not based on truth. I thought, everyones so fabulous, and Im just a girl from Inglewood, California, she says.
Although she got jobs easily in Europe, US agencies and casting directors would look at her and say, We already have a black girl. This attitude led to what is still one of the most notorious feuds in fashion. When Banks was starting out, she was often pitched as the next Naomi Campbell, much to Campbells displeasure: the British supermodel allegedly had Banks fired from shows and photo shoots. Banks eventually left the high fashion world, partly because of the weight issue, but also out of a desire to get away from this weird Mean Girls environment. In 2005, she somehow convinced Campbell to appear on her talkshow and the result was one of the most extraordinary onscreen encounters since Bette Davis squared up to Joan Crawford.
I was tired of having to deal with you. I was tired of that pain, Banks tells Campbell.
I can understand you want to believe [I got you fired from shoots.] But its not important to me. Life means more to me than that, retorts an unflappably imperious Campbell.
What happened then, Naomi, is a big part of who I am today! Banks snaps back.
I ask if theyre in contact at all. Oh no no no. Its funny, Naomi hasnt done anything bad to me, and that other stuff was decades and decades ago. But it was just such a painful time, it really did something to me, she says.
I tell her she seemed incredibly composed in the interview, given she was confronting someone who has since been convicted of assault four times.
Honestly, the most nervous shows Ive ever done have been interviewing all the presidential candidates, and interviewing her, Banks says.
I ask if she ever watched The Face, the shortlived modelling show which Campbell hosted. She doesnt blink.
No, but I did see a clip online, she says.
And what did she think?
I thought it was fantastic, she deadpans, then bursts out laughing.
So much of Bankss appeal relies on her audience believing theyre seeing her true self. Instead of being an untouchable fashion queen like Campbell, shes the goofy, overemotional friend. Top Models most iconic (and memed) moment came in 2005, when Banks lost her temper with contestant Tiffany Richardson, because she felt Richardson hadnt tried hard enough, and wasnt upset enough when she was dropped from the show. I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you, how dare you?! Banks screamed at the bemused teenager.
I tell Banks that my friend Joe thinks Top Model is more camp than RuPauls Drag Race, which is itself a kind of drag version of Bankss show.
Oh yes, were very campy, thats deliberate. So thank you, Joe! Look, fashion can feel intimidating, so if you were to play it straight it wouldnt drive millions of people to watch it.
So when she shouted at Richardson, was that her camping it up? She recoils in shock at the idea. Oh, hell no. Camp is me fake fainting or jumping up and down, or talking about my weaves. But moments like that, I tap into pain, and that pain is real.
In her encounter with Richardson, it was clear that what infuriated Banks was the thought that a working-class black girl was throwing away an amazing opportunity. Its funny, I was thinking about Tiffany earlier today, and yeah, I felt a personal connection to her. But it was also hearing her say, Im just not smart enough, and then she brought race into it [as a reason for why she was dropped from the show]. I had to tell her and every girl in the room, Its not because youre black.
The fear of wasting opportunities is still what drives Banks today. Instead of slogging her guts out over this mall I mean elevated shopping experience she could have married a rich manand spent her days shopping in Beverly Hills. Oh my God, that is hell, she says. I see some models and its like they cashed in their career. Thats like selling your soul, to be with somebody because they have money. You cant be happy, she says in a doomy whisper.
Banks and her long-term partner, the Norwegian photographer Erik Asla, had their son, York, by surrogacy four years ago. There were media reports that she and Asla broke up soon afterwards, but on these subjects her relationship and her child Banks slams shut like a clam. Im very protective of my personal life. So if you look at my social media, you dont see my child. I know my followers would quadruple if I posted pictures of him, but I dont want to use my child for my career, she says. She wont even confirm where she lives, shaking her head with sealed shut lips. And in that moment, the wacky, over-the-top goofball suddenly looks like a very cautious and thoughtful operator.
Banks is a likable and shrewd woman, and it would take a gambler with stronger nerves than me to bet against her. Given that she is planning to start shooting her 25th season of Americas Next Top Model, maybe ModelLand really will be, as she solemnly says, my Steamboat Willie, the early Mickey Mouse cartoon that launched Disneys kingdom. But doesnt she find it all a bit, I dont know, tiring? All this work to be the next Oprah, the next Disney, the next JK Rowling?
Oh no, I love it! But Ill tell you what I do hate: I hate when people ask for a selfie. Im like, You just want to prove you were here. But cant I give you a hug and tell you how to smize, and it will be something that youll remember for ever and ever?
And with that Banks gives me a hug goodbye. I dont know if Ill remember it for ever, but it was a pretty good hug.
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