Giselle Samson earned one of the coveted spots in cycle 1 of America’s Next Top Model, which aired in 2003. Going into the show, there was a lot of mystery about what to expect from the Tyra Banks-hosted project. With reality TV being a new phenomenon, the models cast for the show were diving into what they expected to be a show to help their modeling careers. For Samson, it felt much different.

Samson, who is Latina and was 18 during cycle 1, was tapped for the show when it was still in development. Unlike most of the other models, she didn’t go through the standard casting process. Instead, production came to her. It was summer 2022, and she had been working at Disneyland, as well as doing some modeling. As Banks and fellow executive producer Ken Mok shared in the new Netflix documentary Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, they wanted diversity within the cast to show viewers the beauty of a variety of skin tones and body types.

She tells PEOPLE that coming into the show, she felt secure in herself. She was a dancer, she was working and she felt like she had what it took to win America’s Next Top Model. She even won the first runway challenge on the show. But her confidence was quickly misconstrued, she claims.

Upon the first elimination, Samson was thrown by feedback she claims she was given by Banks.

“Tyra stood there in front of me and said, ‘Giselle, you need to learn how to humble yourself. Otherwise, America’s not going to like you,'” she tells PEOPLE of a moment that never made it to air. “You tell that to a very confident, already established, working person, making money, when all she wants is America to like her, so that way she can be a star.”

Samson, who is now 41, tells PEOPLE that she wasn’t really sure how to appear unconfident, so she started being “self-deprecating” in an effort to come off more humble.

But then Samson was pegged as the girl with no confidence on the show, on top of experiencing body-shaming…