The Real Reason America's Next Top Model Contestants Always Hung Out In The Closet

Fans of America's Next Top Model have been getting a lot of behind the scenes details from cycle nine contestant, Sarah Hartshorne, as she shares her experiences on the show in a series of recent tell-all TikToks. As speculated by Insider, the series' availability on Hulu and Amazon Prime may be prompting viewers to re-evaluate the show's more problematic moments, and Hartshorne's TikTok posts are giving fans the behind-the-scenes info they crave.

Last week, she posted about what she said was one of the most common questions she received, namely, "What do the models eat?" Hartshorne's two-part answer revealed that most of the contestants' dietary decisions were made based on budget and convenience, not nutritional value, and described "junk food nights" where all of the models would make tater tots and hot pockets and pile into the walk-in closet for a gossip session.

This sleepover vibe sounds like a lot of fun, to be honest, but it left many fans had wondering what made a walk-in closet such an appealing place to eat dinner? Hartshorne explains that it was the only place where the models could have even the chance at privacy due to the way the filming was divided between stationary cameras and mobile film crews.

"We were staying in this huge LA mansion, and there were two types of cameras, there were stationary security type cameras that had a team of people watching them," Sarah Hartshorne explained, "and then there was a camera crew that was, you know, walking around, and the people in the control room would, like, send them if anything interesting happened." She added that as a contestant she was baffled by what the control room crew found interesting and described being swarmed by a film crew once while simply doing dishes.

Hartshorne also said that although the closet wasn't completely private, the models had a tiny bit of control over what was being filmed, and how. "There were still cameras in the back of the closet but because it was in the back of the house we could kinda hear them coming and they would have to ask to get by us in order to get the shot." Hartshorne shares. "It was this one place in the house where we felt we had some semblance of control."

It seems that the producers weren't too keen on the setup though, and felt that perhaps the models were taking advantage of the logistical loophole. "They asked us to stop hanging out there but it was nice while it lasted."