Tyra Banks is suing Netflix for defamation, claiming she was manipulated into joining the streamer’s “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model” documentary.
“Tyra Banks participated in the Netflix documentary series ‘America’s Next Top Model’ (‘ANTM’) because she believed viewers deserved an honest conversation about the show’s legacy – its successes and its shortcomings,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed Saturday. reports People.
“There are aspects of the show that Ms. Banks takes responsibility for, and she wanted ANTM viewers to hear it directly from her.”
“Going into her interview, Ms. Banks did not limit the ANTM topics the interviewer could ask,” the lawsuit continues. “During a three-and-a-half-hour interview, Ms. Banks answered questions about the show’s groundbreaking history, including criticisms of decisions she would approach differently today.”
Out of the three-hour interview, the former supermodel claims that only 16 minutes of her talk with the producers were used in the final product, and that the clips used were “stripped for context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed.”
“The Netflix series ‘Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model’ (the ‘Netflix Series’) was sold to viewers as a ‘documentary series,'” the lawsuit continued.
“Netflix called it ‘the definitive, must-watch chronicle of ‘America’s Next Top Model.'” Genre matters. Viewers of a documentary don’t expect manufactured drama or contrived narratives. They expect facts. Because they were promised a documentary, that’s exactly how viewers interacted with the Netflix series,” the lawsuit adds.
As those who watched may recall, the banks took responsibility for many of them the controversial storylines who appeared in the reality modeling competition series.
While some of her comments were redacted from the cleared edit, Banks also appears to take issue with some of the topics that remained — namely former contestant Shandi Sullivan’s testimony from the show.
In the documentaries, Sullivan claims she was sexually assaulted by a male model during the Cycle 2 contestants’ stay in Italy. Video from the season showed Sullivan drinking wine and partying with the girls and some other male models before climbing into bed with one of them.
The former model told viewers she was blacked out when the interaction took place. But the reality show framed the incident as a cheating scandal (Sullivan had a boyfriend at the time) rather than an alleged assault.
In another clip, it shows Banks in a confessional writing admitting knowledge of the alleged assault, but she claims she was not involved in the production or editing of storylines.
The lawsuit continues: “Worse, the false narrative the producers constructed—through selective editing, deliberate omission, and surgical manipulation of continuous footage—included Ms. Banks knowingly allowing a contestant to be sexually assaulted on her show, taking advantage of that contestant when she was not even called upon to do so when asked to rate it. Banks is a complete fabrication—one that Netflix streamed to a global audience of millions.”
Banks also fired back at claims that she shut down production during one cycle after a crew member reported that a regular “ANTM” cast member engaged in inappropriate behavior.
“That answer would not have been hypothetical. It would have been 20 based on what Ms. Banks actually did during a cycle after someone on the crew reported directly to Ms. Banks that another regular member of the ANTM cast had engaged in a pattern of inappropriate sexual behavior during the production of ANTM,” the lawsuit continues.
“Ms. Banks immediately shared the report with other executives and ensured that the issue was escalated to the network,” the lawsuit adds. “Ms. Banks acted quickly and gave the case the serious attention it deserved. In response, production was paused so that the entire cast and crew could undergo sexual harassment training conducted by an outside expert.”
Banks is asking for a jury trial to determine the “appropriate” amount she should receive in damages.
A representative for the model did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
