Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes for Laughing at “ANTM” Model Who Fell on Runway After Netflix Documentary Resurfaces “View” Clip
Whoopi Goldberg Apologizes for Laughing at “ANTM” Model Who Fell on Runway After Netflix Documentary Resurfaces “View” Clip
Desiree Anello, Dave QuinnWed, February 18, 2026 at 7:35 PM UTC
0
Whoopi Goldberg on 'The View'; Alexandra Underwood falls on 'America's Next Top Model'
ABC; Netflix
Whoopi Goldberg apologized for laughing at America’s Next Top Model contestant Alexandra Underwood after seeing her get hit by a pendulum and knocked to the ground during Cycle 14
“I couldn’t help it. It was funny as hell,” she said after a clip of her reaction was resurfaced in Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model
The View host also emphasized that she’s had to learn to “take it when people are laughing” in her own life
Whoopi Goldberg is apologizing for her unfiltered reactions.
During Cycle 14 of America’s Next Top Model, contestant Alexandra Underwood was instructed to walk down a runway with a large pendulum swinging back and forth alongside a few other models. And while looking back at the moment that Underwood was hit by the pendulum and knocked to the ground, Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model also revisited the morning talk show host, 80, laughing at her misfortune on The View.
Now, over 15 years later, Goldberg is taking accountability for her very public reaction.
"Here's something I want to do, because in this documentary there's a clip from our show, where I had showed the ladies this thing,” Goldberg began of the incident during a Feb. 18 episode of The View. “Now, this was, to me, one of the funniest things I had ever seen in my life."
Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Savannah Chrisley on 'The View'
“I wanted to apologize, because there’s a person who got knocked off that,” she continued. “And her name is Alexandra Underwood from Cycle 14. I’m sorry I laughed at this. I couldn’t help it. It was funny as hell. But I am telling you, it’s one of the funniest things, if I had to point to something. It is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”
While her fellow cohost Sara Haines jokingly clarified that Goldberg is more “sorry she’s still laughing about it” than her initial reaction itself, Joy Behar quipped to Goldberg, “Next week, you’re going to apologize for this.”
Advertisement
In response, Goldberg insisted that she is no stranger to what it feels like to fall down in one way or another.
“I have fallen down,” she said. “And you have to take it when people are laughing.”
— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Alexandra Underwood attends BERGDORF GOODMAN Fashion's Night Out
PATRICK MCMULLAN/Patrick McMullan via Getty
“But this is maybe 10 years ago, and she’s a probably, she’s a grown-up now,” she added of Underwood. “She’s a grown woman. Maybe she has kids. And I just wanted her to know that I wasn’t laughing — I was laughing ‘cause to me, that’s what’s [funny]. People slipping and falling, banana peels…”
Beyond the dangerous challenge that could’ve left Underwood seriously injured, Tyra Banks and the other America’s Next Top Model personalities weighed in on the show’s most controversial moments in the documentary, during which models were shown making unhealthy lifestyle choices, posing in questionable photo shoots and portraying races and ethnicities outside their own.
“I knew I went too far,” Banks, 52, admits in the documentary. “It was very, very intense, but you guys were demanding it, so we kept pushing it, more and more and more.”
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
