Former America’s Next Top Model contestant Keenyah Hill has opened up about the pressure she felt to lose weight after filming the reality show.
“I want people to understand. I was 5’11 and at the time I was about 130 lbs, which is really, really slim,” Hill, 40, recalled on the “Viall Files” podcast on Wednesday, March 4. “Like, [I was] very slim. … I was probably between a [size] two and four, which I’m not too far from now. They did kind of prep us but again it all comes back to the show and reality TV.”
The 2026 Netflix documentary Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model took a critical look at the impact of the pioneering reality show. One notable segment examined how Hill was repeatedly critiqued for her body size and diet during season 4.
Hill pointed out in the documentary that America’s Next Top Model aired a montage in one episode that made it look like she was constantly eating bagels on set.
“In hindsight, it’s like they had to find something as a part of the narrative,” Hill explained in Reality Check. “That’s when I knew, OK, this is intentional. It was a little bit damaging to see them editing me eating the same bagel, for example, showing me eating it as if I’ve eaten three bagels but it really was the same one.”
During her appearance on “The Viall Files” podcast, Hill revealed that she was “made fun of pretty badly” growing up because she didn’t have a “curvy and thick” body.
“[And I was teased] for being really slim. I had glasses, braces. Like, most models kind of start off awkward and I was always made fun of for being too skinny,” she noted. “By the time I went onto [ANTM], I was like, this is where I belong! This is perfect.”
Hill described the emotional whiplash of “being told you are not skinny” when it came time to film America’s Next Top Model.
“It was a shock and it was confusing,” she remembered.
Host Nick Viall asked whether Hill took the criticism about her weight on ANTM as “harsh but constructive feedback” or viewed it all as fodder for the TV show.
“I think it was maybe a little bit of both but … I was so, so skinny,” she explained. “I was really, really, really skinny. … A part of me feels like they had to find something and stretch that thing out in a major way.”
By the time she’d wrapped production on ANTM, Hill had “lost a bunch of weight” to pursue modeling in New York City, but found out that agencies still were not receptive.
“I did not realize that [the show] was not going to be the most helpful thing for my career,” she said. “Once I moved to New York, because reality TV was not revered how it is now, agencies were viewing us as reality stars.”
Ahead of Netflix’s premiere of Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, Hill said she was “grateful for the opportunity to lend my voice about my experience” in the documentary.
“Sending SO MUCH LOVE to the ANTM Alumni,” she wrote via Instagram on February 16. “I know we all had very different experiences on the show and I feel for everyone who had to heal from the aftermath with half the world watching!! Grateful to have been a part of such a legendary show.”
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is available to stream now via Netflix.
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