Tyra Banks Sues Netflix Over America’s Next Top Model Doc

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Tyra Banks Sues Netflix Over America’s Next Top Model Doc

Photo: Jeff Schear/Getty Images for Spotify

Tyra Banks wants to be on top, even if it means getting her lawyers involved. The America’s Next Top Model host and creator filed a lawsuit against Netflix for defamation regarding their documentary, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, claiming the doc manipulated her three-hour-long interview to make her look bad, per TMZ. The lawsuit claims that the producers created a false narrative around Banks through “selective editing, deliberate omission, and surgical manipulation of continuous footage – including 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.” She also claims that she had no idea Cycle 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan was involved in the documentary, and said she was sexually assaulted on the show. “The implication is devastating and deliberate: that Tyra Banks cannot even remember the story of the woman who was assaulted on her show,” the lawsuit adds.

Banks says she did not have a chance to view the final product until one day before it aired on Netflix. She says only 16 minutes of interview footage was used, and the documentary misrepresented her attempts to contact Miss Jay Alexander after their stroke in 2022. “Had the producers informed Ms. Banks that part of the Netflix Series narrative would include Miss J saying that Ms. Banks never visited him in the hospital, Ms. Banks would have explained that she had been living in Australia for 2 1/2 years,” the lawsuit writes. “She would have shown how hard she tried to get in touch with Miss J personally when she had initially heard the news of his stroke. And she would have shown the text message that arrived from Miss J’s family member who eventually texted back months later and apologized for not responding to Ms. Banks’ texts and multiple calls sooner due to her being focused on getting him better.”