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Earlier this year, Netflix’s 2026 release schedule ushered in the premiere of Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model, a three-part documentary series on the eponymous reality competition series. The show features various interviews with the long-running show’s former contestants and hosts, including series creator Tyra Banks. Now, it seems Banks has taken issue with the streamer, as she’s formally suing the company in connection to her involvement in the doc. And Banks’ lawsuit lays out her rationale for taking legal action.
Banks is specifically filing suit over alleged defamation by implication, breach of contract, false endorsement and false light. Aside from Netflix, other defendants named in the lawsuit include against Netflix as well as 89 Blocks Holdings, EverWonder Studio, Netflix Music and documentary co-directors Daniel Sivan and Mor Loushy, per Variety. 52-year-old Banks reportedly takes issue with the “three-and-a-half-hour” interview she did being cut down to only “16 minutes.”
Upon the doc’s release, a lot was said about Banks’ segments as well as claims made against her from others who were involved with the show during the early aughts. Per the lawsuit, Banks believes her interview was “reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed.” The media personality’s lawyers also allege that the “accountability Ms. Banks took” for certain situations was left out of the final edit. Additionally, the suit reads:
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. That narrative about Ms. Banks is a complete fabrication—one that Netflix streamed to a global audience of millions.
Ahead of Reality Check’s release, some viewers were seemingly of the impression that it would be a fluffy piece on the inner workings of the UPN/CW/VH1 show that ran for 24 seasons. Sivan and Loushy’s doc actually features intimate stories, with various series alums sharing their specific experiences. More than a few accusations were leveled against Banks, who was accused of not taking accountability for some of the over-the-top situations that occurred on the show. Another notable topic was Banks’ handling of a contestant, Shandi Sullivan, having sex while being blackout drunk amid production.
Banks, who’s received backlash over the years for varying aspects of the series, also made headlines due to comments made by former friend and fellow judge Miss J Alexander, who claimed Banks “reached out” but didn’t visit him after he suffered a stroke that left him unable to walk or talk. (Alexander has since relearned how to speak.) Via her lawsuit, Banks responded to some of the claims leveled against her, and her lawyers also laid out her response to the Sullivan matter:
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.
Tyra Banks is currently seeking an “appropriate” amount of punitive damages as part of this case and wants a jury trial. All the while, Reality Check: Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model has received critical acclaim, and it trended high amongst titles available to Netflix subscription holders. As of this writing, neither Netflix nor any of the other parties named in the case have formally responded to Banks’ lawsuit.
