Tyra Banks Sues Netflix for Defamation

Tyra Banks is suing Netflix for defamation. According to Variety, the model, actress and host is claiming that her interviews for Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model were manipulated for the streaming giant’s recent docuseries about her old show, America's Next Top Model. Banks is reportedly suing Netflix, 89 Blocks Holdings, EverWonder Studio, Netflix Music and co-directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan for false light, defamation by implication, breach of contract and false endorsement. 

According to the lawsuit, the star’s attorneys say the former Next Top Model host gave the docuseries producers a “three-and-a-half-hour” interview, only to have it cut down to “about 16 minutes.” The suit claims that all that was used was “reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed.”It also alleges that the “accountability Ms. Banks took” for the show “ended up on the cutting room floor.”

“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 reads. “That narrative about Ms. Banks is a complete fabrication — one that Netflix streamed to a global audience of millions.”

The suit specifically points out one “egregious example of the producers’ manipulation to create a false narrative,” involving cycle two contestant Shandi Sullivan.

“One of the areas of interest about Top Model 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.”

America’s Next Top Model aired regularly from 2003 to 2012 and then annually from 2013 to 2018. Banks is requesting a jury trial. 

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