Tyra Banks Sues Netflix and Israeli Filmmakers Over ‘America’s Next Top Model’ Docuseries

Tyra Banks, the supermodel and longtime host of America’s Next Top Model, has filed a lawsuit against Netflix and the makers of the documentary series Reality Check: Behind America’s Next Top Model, Variety reported overnight. The defendants include the series directors, Israeli filmmakers Mor Lushi and Daniel Sivan.

The docuseries, Reality Check: Behind America’s Next Top Model, examined the darker side of Banks’s reality competition, which ran for more than 20 seasons. Banks appeared in the series, but she now says her remarks were manipulated in editing.

According to the complaint, roughly 16 minutes of material were taken from a three-and-a-half-hour interview and reassembled to support a “false and defamatory narrative” that did not reflect what she actually said. The lawsuit also says moments in which Banks accepted responsibility for various failures were cut from the final version.

The suit also focuses on a storyline involving contestant Shandi Sullivan, who in one season had sex with another model while intoxicated. The complaint says the series portrayed the incident as if Banks knowingly allowed a contestant to be sexually assaulted on her show, exploited the trauma for ratings, and then could not remember the episode when asked about it. Banks’s lawyers call that “a complete fabrication,” and say she had never previously heard the claim that the encounter was sexual assault rather than consensual sex. They also say Banks did remember the episode in her interview, but that editing removed that material to create a misleading impression.