America’s Next Top Model had its contestants catwalking on the program’s runway, but also human centipede-ing in the audition process, according to cycle 9 model Sarah Hartshorne.

In Entertainment Weekly‘s exclusive preview (above) of the ANTM-focused season finale of Vice TV’s Dark Side of Reality TV docuseries (airing Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT), the Massachusetts native recalls showing up to try out for the ninth cycle of the Tyra Banks-hosted competition series, and she says that conditions were less than desirable.

“They filed between 100 and 200 girls into this ballroom, and they cram us along a wall in a single-file line. The thing they kept repeating and kept saying was, ‘Nose to the back of the head, nose to the back of the head. Your nose should be touching the head of the girl in front of you,'” Hartshorne, who was 20 at the time of the show’s production, recalls in the clip above. “So, we all had to, like as a centipede, step forward, out of our shoes.”

Hartshorne, who was the only “plus-size” model of the cycle, also remembered “looking down and being like, I’m the only one that has tits that make that impossible,” with regard to the show’s request that the models stand in such close proximity.

She eventually made it to the final round of casting, and joined the show as one of the primary competitors. Hartshorne, who’s currently a comedian and writer based in New York City, eventually placed eighth of 13 total models on ANTM cycle 9, and has regularly spoken out about the show in recent years.

EW has reached out to representatives for Banks and producer Ken Mok — as well as to producer Laura Fuest Silva directly — for comment.

In addition to Hartshorne, the Dark Side of Reality TV‘s season finale also features interviews with supermodel, former ANTM judge, and regular series critic Janice Dickinson, former shoot director Andrew Patterson, as well as other show alums like cycle 5 model and eventual cycle 17 winner Lisa D’Amato, cycle 14 contestant and cycle 17 finalist Angelea Preston, and cycle 24 runner-up Jeana Turner.

For a 20th anniversary oral history of the show’s wildest moments featuring interviews with 14 former contestants, Preston told EW in 2023 that she initially won the cycle 17 edition of the show — the series’ first all-star edition — but alleged that the show stripped her of her title over past survival sex work.

“I was so hurt,” Preston told EW at the time, adding that she eventually attempted to sue the show for $3 million, but eventually dropped the suit. “I felt like my life and career was ruined. I’m going to be blacklisted, I’m never going to be a model now. This is something that was always going to follow me. because it wasn’t made public yet, but they know, and they work for this big company and they hold these keys for success.”

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EW corroborated Preston’s story about being stripped of the title with two sources close to the production, which later filmed a separate finale with the remaining two finalists, cycle 5’s Lisa D’Amato and cycle 12’s Allison Harvard (both of whom declined EW’s request for an interview), with D’Amato ultimately winning.

Other notable show moments contestants spoke to EW about included on-air sexual assaults, challenges that saw the contestants darkening their skin to portray other races, and an infamous photoshoot at a graveyard shortly after cycle 4 model Kahlen Rondot learned that a close friend had died.

In response to EW’s reporting, Mok did not address individual claims, but provided a general email statement: “As this story has been reported on numerous times over the last 20 years, I have nothing left to add except that I have nothing but respect for everyone who has appeared on the show,” he said through a representative. “I wish all of them nothing but health and happiness in their future endeavors.” (Fuest Silva did not respond to EW’s request for comment at the time.)