- Primary Subject: Tyra Banks' defamation lawsuit against Netflix
- Key Update: America's Next Top Model creator Tyra Banks has filed a federal lawsuit against Netflix, alleging that a recent docuseries used deceptive editing to misrepresent her actions.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: June 15, 2026
- Quick Answer: Tyra Banks is suing Netflix for defamation, claiming the docuseries Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model manipulated her interview to create a false narrative.
Television producer and former supermodel Tyra Banks has taken legal action against Netflix and the production team behind Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model. In a lawsuit filed in a Los Angeles federal court, Banks alleges that the three-part docuseries intentionally misrepresented her during a lengthy sit-down interview.
WARNING: This article contains mentions of disturbing topics such as sexual assault, so proceed with caution.
Tyra Banks Reportedly Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Netflix Over ANTM Docuseries
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As reported on Variety, Banks is suing Netflix, the production team (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."
The outlet obtained Banks' filed lawsuit, in which her lawyers claimed that 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."
According to the suit, what was left in those 16 minutes is "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."
The writing continued that the released material was constructed through "selective editing, deliberate omission and surgical manipulation", considering that it included footage of Banks seemingly "allowing a contestant to be sexually assaulted on her show" and that they "exploited that contestant's trauma for ratings."
Lawsuit Highlights "Selective Editing" of Tyra Banks' Sit-Down Interview
The legal complaint also provided a specific example of which interview footage was allegedly manipulated, pointing to a sequence regarding Cycle 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan.
For over two decades, the infamous incident in Milan has been publicly framed and discussed as a cheating scandal after an intoxicated Sullivan confessed her infidelity to her boyfriend on camera. However, the Netflix series saw it differently.
"On the Netflix series," the lawsuit explained, "Ms. Sullivan is shown describing the event as an assault—something Ms. Banks had never heard before and was not told during her interview."
The lawsuit pointed out the part where Banks was not informed about the prompt. She was asked, 'You remember the story with Shandi?' and the episode shows Banks glancing upward, saying 'um,' and then the screen cuts to black, seemingly implying she "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."
The core arguments of "surgical manipulation" and "selective editing" in Banks' complaint have drawn pointed reactions from former America's Next Top Model alumni who spent years leveling similar accusations against the reality franchise.
In a phone interview with Entertainment Tonight, Cycle 14 and All-Stars contestant Angelea Preston, who famously attempted to sue ANTM for $3 million in 2014 before the suit was later dropped, directly addressed Banks' legal battle with a blunt message: "Now you know how we feel. It's kind of like a taste of your own medicine, in a way."
Tyra Banks, who hosted America's Next Top Model for 22 cycles starting in 2003, is requesting a jury trial to determine the "appropriate" amount of damages for the evidence. Netflix's representatives have yet to publicly address the defamation lawsuit, as of writing.
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