Supermodel and television personality Tyra Banks filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix on Saturday, alleging that her testimony was edited and misrepresented in the streaming platform’s recent America’s Next Top Model docuseries.
Banks has instituted legal proceedings against Netflix, 89 Blocks Holdings, EverWonder Studio, Netflix Music, and documentary co-directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, accusing them of false light, implied defamation, breach of contract, and false endorsement.
Court documents obtained by Variety state that Banks’ legal team alleges the former America’s Next Top Model host participated in a “three-and-a-half-hour” interview for Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model,” which was later edited down to approximately “16 minutes.”
The lawsuit further claims that what remained of the interview was “reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed.” It also alleges that the “accountability Ms. Banks took” regarding certain shortcomings of the show was “left on the cutting room floor” during the editing process.
“Worse, the false narrative the producers constructed—through selective editing, deliberate omission, and surgical manipulation of continuous footage—included that Ms. Banks knowingly allowed a contestant to be sexually assaulted on her show, exploited that contestant’s trauma for ratings, and then could not even remember it when asked,” the suit read. “That narrative about Ms. Banks is a complete fabrication—one that Netflix streamed to a global audience of millions.”
The filing highlights what it describes as an “egregious example of the producers’ manipulation to create a false narrative,” which centres on ANTM cycle two contestant Shadni Sullivan.
“One of the areas of interest about ‘ANTM’ over the last twenty years has been about an evening during which Ms. Sullivan was intoxicated, had intercourse with a man in Milan, and quickly confessed her infidelity to her longtime boyfriend,” the suit explains. “On the Netflix Series, Ms. Sullivan is shown describing the event as an assault—something Ms. Banks had never heard before and was not told during her interview. Having withheld that information, Ms. Loushy asks Ms. Banks: ‘You remember the story with Shandi?’ The episode shows Ms. Banks glance upward, say ‘um,’ and then the screen cuts to black. The implication is devastating and deliberate: that Tyra Banks cannot even remember the story of the woman who was assaulted on her show.”
Banks’ legal team argues that the unedited footage shows her nodding and stating, “I do remember her story,” which they say was excluded from the final version used in the documentary.
Banks, who fronted America’s Next Top Model for 22 cycles from 2003, is also asking for a jury trial to assess what she considers a fair level of punitive damages in relation to the alleged misconduct.
