Tyra Banks is taking Netflix to court for a defamation lawsuit, tied to her participation in the Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model docuseries.
Filed on Friday (July 12), the suit names Netflix, EverWonder Studio, Wise Child Studio, and directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan as defendants.
At the core of Banks' complaint is the fact that Netflix only used 16 minutes of her almost four-hour interview for the docuseries, which she argues is "stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative." The complaint charges the production used "selective editing, deliberate omission, and surgical manipulation of continuous footage."
The resulting portrait, Banks alleges, was that she "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." Her filing calls that characterization "a complete fabrication."
Banks also brought up ANTM contestant Shandi Sullivan's alleged sexual assault and claimed in the lawsuit that she was unaware that the aspiring model classified what happened to her as sexual assault.
"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 says. "But that was false. The full footage of Ms. Banks' interview reveals two things that the producers cut out and did not show viewers in Episode 1: before the upward glance, Ms. Banks nods — affirmatively, unmistakably — and immediately says, 'I do remember her story.' By carving the nod out of the middle of the sequence and cutting off Ms. Banks' comment at the end, the producers ensured that viewers would see only the lie and not the truth."
In response to the "false and defamatory" portrayal of Banks for these issues, and several others that the lawsuit brings up (such as claims she shut down production over a cast member's inapproproate misconduct), the former host of ANTM is suing for "damages, including loss of future business opportunities, loss of business income, other compounding losses as will be shown at trial."
In addition to that, Banks requested a jury trial to determine the compensation that she receives for the Netflix series.
Banks' new lawsuit comes days after former ANTM host Kelly Cutrone publicly defended her during an appearance on the Chris vs. the People podcast. On the show, Cutrone criticized former creative director Jay Manuel for being involved in the documentary.
"She got done dirty on that f*cking documentary," Cutrone said, adding that she turned down multiple invitations to participate in the project. "I already knew what direction it was going to take," she explained.
