“ANTM ”star Angelea Preston reacts to Tyra Banks suing Netflix over docuseries editing: ‘Now she knows how we feel’ (exclusive)

Key Points

• America’s Next Top Model star Angelea Preston has reacted to Tyra Banks’ legal action against Netflix and Reality Check producers.

• Preston tells EW Banks now knows “how we feel” after the show, and urged Banks to release alleged footage of her winning cycle 17 after her title was allegedly stripped over past sex work.

• “Bitch! For real, girl?” cycle 1 winner Adrianne Curry asked in a separate social media video.

America’s Next Top Model star Angelea Preston and cycle 1 winner Adrianne Curry have shaded Tyra Banks’ legal action against filmmakers behind Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model docuseries.

One day after Banks filed a complaint against the streaming service and Reality Check filmmakers over allegedly creating a “false narrative” about her via “selective editing, deliberate omission, and surgical manipulation of continuous footage” of the ANTM-centered docuseries, Preston exclusively speaks with Entertainment Weekly about her reaction to the supermodel’s filing — particularly after she alleged in the past that Banks and the ANTM production team deliberately edited her initially filmed cycle 17 victory out of the final broadcast and crowned another competitor because staff discovered that she’d engaged in past sex work.

In a phone interview with EW, Preston, who attempted to sue ANTM in 2014 for $3 million (the suit was later dropped), references the “surgical manipulation” and “selective editing” portion of the legal complaint in a message to Banks: “Now you know how we feel. It’s kind of like a taste of your own medicine, in a way.”

Preston’s remarks come after ANTM cycle 1 winner Curry also suggested in a new social media post that Banks’ move mirrored the same issue that numerous ANTM contestants have alleged about Banks and the reality show’s production company for over two decades.

“I read that Tyra Banks is suing Netflix because she didn’t like being edited,” Curry said in a short Instagram video (below), chuckling as she recounted the information. She continued, “Bitch! For real girl?” before laughing once again at the development.

Preston tells EW that, if what Banks alleges in the filing is true, she feels it would be “karma” for the things that numerous ANTM contestants have alleged about the reality show also allegedly engaging in selective editing and situational manipulation across its 24-cycle run.

Though Preston initially competed on ANTM cycle 14 and ultimately tied for third place, she returned to compete on the all-star cycle 17 edition, which she previously told EW she won at a ceremony in Greece.

Still, Preston told EW in a 2023 interview, producers allegedly used her admitted engagement in past sex work before the show as a reason to strip her of the title, reshoot the finale in the United States (cycle 5’s Lisa D’Amato was crowned the winner in footage that aired for audiences), and scrap all alleged video of Preston’s victory in the end. (Banks and executive producer Ken Mok declined to comment on this allegation to EW in 2023, while representatives for producer Laura Fuest Silva did not respond to EW’s multiple requests for comment at the time.)

“Can I see the footage? Can I see it?” Preston asks, referencing the “false narrative” language in the legal filing when she again alleges to EW that the show did just that against her at the end of cycle 17. “Tyra, you want Netflix to release the footage? Can you release the footage of me winning? If you win or settle with Netflix, can you give me my $100,000? You’ve got it now, because you’re a millionaire. Also, can I finally get my money? Because I have credit card debt, and I’m a single mother out here raising a little Black boy. Girl! Times are hard out here.”

A portion of Banks’ filing against Reality Check directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, and production company EverWonder Studio alleges that the supermodel repeatedly requested footage from her interview participation in the three-part project was withheld. Wording suggests that “complete, unedited footage of her interview will confirm what the existing evidence already demonstrates: that the producers intentionally constructed a false narrative that misrepresented Ms. Banks and mislead viewers,” and that “Netflix and the producers have refused to provide access to the footage,” which, she says, means she’s “been denied the ability to make the full truth public.”

The filing adds: “Left with no alternative, Ms. Banks brings this action to hold the producers accountable, to compel the production of the unedited footage they have refused to release to Ms. Banks, and to vindicate the reputation they deliberately impaired.”

Adrianne Curry and Tyra Banks of ‘America’s Next Top Model’
Credit: Frederick M. Brown/Getty

Preston, who now works as a news producer and journalist in New York, speculates that the reason many contestants have spoken out about the show is, as she says, models “had to figure it the f— out after” the show ended. “We had no help. After your final episode airs, you’re out there on your own.”

She adds that “a lot of doors were closed in our faces because we participated” in the show, as many contestants have spoken openly about what’s commonly referred to as the “ANTM stigma” in the fashion industry, as models claim serious fashion houses and commercial clients didn’t, in the early aughts, want to work with people who’d made a name for themselves on reality TV.

Tyra Banks on ‘ANTM’; Banks in ‘Reality Check’
Credit: Daniel Garriga/CBS Photo Archive/Getty; Netflix

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“I always go back to RuPaul’s Drag Race. I see what RuPaul has done for the queens on that show. They go on tours, they are out here, she’s used them in her movie [Stop! That! Train!] that she’s got out now, she did AJ and the Queen on Netflix,” Preston says. “These queens are working. That should’ve been us with the show.”

EW has reached out to representatives for Banks for a response to Preston and Curry. EW previously reached out to Netflix and EverWonder for comment on Banks’ legal complaint.

Elsewhere in the complaint, Banks sought damages for a variety of things, including Netflix allegedly using her likeness to promote a soundtrack album cover. Banks’ attorneys claimed in the complaint that the supermodel and ANTM producer-host provided over three hours of interview material, with only 16 minutes used in the final product. The filing alleged that her quotes were largely “stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed” about the show and her involvement.

Banks’ team particularly took issue with how the series allegedly intentionally misrepresented Banks’ reaction to cycle 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan’s allegations about a sexual encounter in Milan. Sullivan previously told EW that she had sex with a local man who was invited to the models’ penthouse and was later filmed confessing the encounter in a highly emotional phone call with her boyfriend at the time. ANTM presented the footage on air as a salacious scandal, though Reality Check presented it as an assault.

In a 2023 statement to EW about Sullivan’s experience — which Sullivan also spoke to EW about at the time — a spokesperson for Banks said that the host “played no role in the events that occurred this night. Everyone, including production, was surprised to find out what had transpired.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly