Tyra Banks sued Netflix on Saturday for defamation, claiming her testimony was manipulated for the streamer’s recent “America’s Next Top Model” docuseries.
Banks is 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, obtained by Variety, Banks’ lawyers claim the former “ANTM” host gave “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model” a “three-and-a-half-hour” interview, only to have it cut down to “about 16 minutes.” What was left, according to the suit, was “reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed.” It added that the “accountability Ms. Banks took” for some of the show’s shortcomings “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 read. “That narrative about Ms. Banks is a complete fabrication—one that Netflix streamed to a global audience of millions.”
Reps for Netflix did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
The suit points out one “egregious example of the producers’ manipulation to create a false narrative,” involving “ANTM” cycle two contestant Shadni Sullivan.
“One of the areas of interest about ‘ANTM’ 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.”
Bank’s lawyers claim that the unedited “full footage” shows her nodding yes and saying, “I do remember her story.”
Banks, who hosted “America’s Next Top Model” for 22 cycles starting in 2003, is requesting a jury trial to recommend an “appropriate” amount of punitive damages for the offense.