Tyra Banks sued Netflix on Saturday in Los Angeles federal court, accusing the company and the directors of Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model of defamation over how her interview was cut and framed. The lawsuit says she sat for three and a half hours of questioning, then saw that material reduced to 16 minutes in a way that made her look as if she had helped hide a contestant’s sexual assault.
The filing seeks damages and an injunction blocking use of Banks’s image in connection with the docuseries soundtrack released as an album. It also says the edit made it appear she used the contestant’s trauma to boost ratings and could not remember the assault when asked, even though Banks says she had not been told or questioned about it during the interview.
That allegation gives the case its force. Banks says the producers used selective editing, deliberate omission and surgical manipulation of continuous footage to build what she calls a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually said. She also says she was not allowed to review the docuseries until a day before its 16 February release and was not contacted for fact-checking afterward.
The dispute lands in the middle of a long-running reappraisal of America's Next Top Model, which launched in 2003 and ran for 24 seasons. The series has faced criticism for body shaming, manipulation of contestants and problematic photoshoots, and Banks has previously acknowledged the insensitivity of some past ANTM moments and “really off choices.”
What makes this fight harder to separate from the old show is the way the new one is said to have shifted the story. Banks says her lawyers reached out in March for the full interview footage, but Netflix and EverWonder denied access, leaving the lawsuit to stand as her challenge to the edit itself. Since the docuseries was released, the reaction has been swift and harsh, and SMiZE + DREAM in Sydney, Australia has been hit with review bombing on Google, according to the filing.
The unanswered question is no longer whether Banks objects to the documentary. It is whether Netflix, Daniel Sivan, Mor Loushy or EverWonder Studio will defend the cut as fair reporting or ever release the full footage that Banks says would show the missing context.
