Former America’s Next Top Model contestant Ambreal Williams revealed a surprising fact about her Cycle 9 (a.k.a. Season 9) elimination.
After being sent home from the competition during Season 9, Episode 9, of the series, Williams was shown raising her arms as she danced out the door. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, the model revealed that the gesture was actually a secret insult to the show’s crew, chiefly Tyra Banks.
“We had an inside joke within the group,” Williams explained in an interview published on Tuesday, July 29. “It was a ‘f**k you.’ So, when I was eliminated, you saw me [raise my hands] and walk off the stage.”
Williams explained that she chose to do so after receiving negative comments from the show’s judging panel, particularly after she escaped elimination due to contestant Ebony Morgan choosing to leave the show a few episodes prior.
“I knew I had a time limit. Once I was eliminated, they couldn’t eliminate me right away again. But, once Tyra told me I was ‘hoochie’ [in an Enrique Iglesias music video shoot], I was like, ‘All right, babe.’ I’d already spoken to the girls. They were trying to get rid of me.”
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Banks did criticize Williams for being promiscuous in her music video performance while giving feedback in Season 9, Episode 8. “I thought you were sexy and hot sliding down the pole, but … hoochie,” Banks said on the show. “I didn’t see a model. I saw just, like, ‘Hey!’ Exactly what I was teaching you guys not to do. You went into some type of comfort zone and went there.”
Williams continued to model after her ANTM elimination but struggled to find work due to her association with the competition series. “I lost a Wrangler’s campaign because I told them that I was on Top Model. I was supposed to be on Project Runway as a model [until] that day I told them I was on Top Model,” she told EW. “My agent used to get so mad at me, and I didn’t realize. So, I stopped telling people I was on Top Model, and I started booking stuff because they didn’t know. I knew that they were not showing my best photos [on the show] because I was getting booked [after the show].”
Regardless of her elimination, Williams said she would be down to return for a potential all-stars season of the show. “I had fun, I made some good friends,” she said. “I don’t think Tyra even remembers me, with so many of us in this sorority. But, I did learn how TV works and what goes on!”
ANTM, which ran for 24 seasons from 2003 to 2018, has faced newfound backlash in recent years over the show’s controversial challenges, diversity efforts, and criticism from past contestants. Banks admitted that the show didn’t “get it right” all of the time while giving a speech at the 2025 Essence Black Women in Hollywood ceremony in February.
“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 said. “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.”