An America’s Next Top Model alum is spilling behind-the-scenes secrets in a new book.

Cycle 9 contestant Sarah Hartshorne opened up about her experience filming the reality competition series in You Wanna Be on Top?: A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America’s Next Top Model, which hit bookshelves on Tuesday, July 8.

In the book, Hartshorne recalled her fellow competitor, Mila Bouzinova, hugging host Tyra Banks after making it to the season’s final 13 models. “Mila Bouzinova strode forward confidently, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and hugged Tyra. Tyra looked at someone off camera and shook her head,” Hartshorne wrote, per Entertainment Weekly.

Banks, however, was not a fan of the physical interaction, as Hartshorne claimed an off-screen crew member yelled to the cast, “No more hugs.”

“She kept reading names. Some girls were already crying when she started, and with each name, they wept harder,” Hartshorne added, joking that she yelled “like a horse” when her own name was called. “I looked in her eyes and thought, God, I can’t wait to go to sleep.”

According to EW, the alleged hug between Bouzinova and Banks did not make the final cut of the September 2007 episode. Bouzinova, who now goes by the name Lyuda, was ultimately eliminated during Cycle 9’s second episode, while Hartshorne came in eighth place overall.

Neither Bouzinova nor Banks have publicly addressed Hartshorne’s book claims.

ANTM ran for 24 seasons from 2003 to 2018 and followed supermodel hopefuls as they competed in a series of challenges to be crowned, as the show’s title suggests, America’s Next Top Model. Banks served as the show’s host for 23 out of its 24 seasons, with singer Rita Ora briefly stepping into her shoes for Cycle 23.

Over the years, the series has faced backlash for its diversity efforts, lack of body inclusivity, and controversial challenges. Banks addressed the ANTM criticism during her speech at the 2025 Essence Black Women in Hollywood ceremony in February.

“You guys have no idea how hard we fought to bring the diversity to the television show at a time where it didn’t exist. … We fought and we struggled, but we made it happen,” she stated. “Did we get it right? Hell no. I said some dumb s**t. But I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together on the internet when there were 24 Cycles of changing the world.”

She continued, “We all evolve. We all get better together. And I am so excited that I and so many of us [have] opened that door for others to follow. And now, my 51-year-old, dimple, cellulite, bigger tummy, 10 million times bigger [breasts] is walking through that door that I opened with all of us behind us on that runway saying, ‘Baby, it’s just beginning.’”