Tyra Banks Pursues Legal Action Over Netflix's ANTM Documentary.
Netflix is being sued by Tyra Banks. In response to court records published by news agencies, Banks filed a slander complaint against Netflix on June 13 following her appearance in the streaming service's 2026 documentary series Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model.
Making a claim Reality Check “was sold to viewers as a 'documentary series,'” the lawsuit stated, "Netflix called it 'the definitive, must-watch chronicle of America's Next Top Model.' The genre matters. Viewers of a documentary do not expect manufactured drama or constructed narratives. They expect facts.”
“Because they were promised a documentary, that is exactly how viewers interacted with the Netflix Series,” according to the lawsuit, several videos were "stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed."
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The lawsuit alleges that although Banks consented to participate in the project because "she believed viewers deserved a candid conversation about the show's legacy—its successes and its shortcomings," the scenes in which the former host of America's Next Top Model accepted responsibility for the show's controversies were removed from the final product.
Cycle 2 competitor Shandi Sullivan claimed to have been sexually raped on camera while filming the program in Italy in 2003. The documentary series examined reported instances of bullying, body shaming, and racial profiling on the ANTM set.
Banks, 52, claims the final cut put the blame on her even though she was questioned about the alleged event during the Netflix documentary series and denied any involvement.
“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 document stated. “That narrative about Ms. Banks is a complete fabrication—one that Netflix streamed to a global audience of millions."
Although Banks, who hosted and produced the show for 22 cycles starting in 2003, did "share her side," the document also stated, “her answers were very honest. But the story that viewers heard was the deceptive story producers chose to tell.”
Netflix has been contacted by news organizations for comment, but they have not received a response.
Banks, executive producer Ken Mok, and former judges Jay Manuel, Miss J. Alexander, and Nigel Barker were interviewed for the 2026 documentary series, which remembered ANTM's greatest and worst on-air events.
The journeys of prior reality show competitors were also included in the exposé.
In the past, Banks acknowledged both the show's cultural influence and its flaws.
"Over 20 years ago I created a show called America’s Next Top Model," in February 2025, she stated as she accepted an award at the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Awards. "And you guys have no idea how hard we fought to bring the diversity to that television show at a time when it didn’t exist.”
"Did we get it right?” she continued. “Hell no. I said some dumb s--t."
Nevertheless, Banks maintains her influence.
"I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together on the internet when there were 24 cycles of changing the world," she went on to say. "And I am so excited that I, and so many of us, have opened that door for others to follow."