Tyra Banks filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix on Saturday, accusing the streaming giant of manipulating her into participating in a bombshell documentary about her former reality show “America’s Next Top Model.”Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Netflix’s “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model” chronicles both the show’s historic successes and its controversies, including an early contestant claiming she was sexually assaulted on camera, another undergoing cosmetic surgery to remain in the competition, and a challenge that required contestants to wear blackface.Banks participated in the three-part documentary, which drew significant attention for examining the exploitative nature of early reality television.She now alleges that her confessionals were “stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed.”“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 lawsuit states.“That narrative about Ms.
Banks is a complete fabrication — one that Netflix streamed to a global audience of millions.”Netflix declined to comment.Banks says she agreed to participate because she believed viewers deserved “candid conversation about the show’s legacy — its successes and its shortcomings.” The suit notes that Netflix aired only 16 minutes of a 3 1/2-hour interview in which she placed no restrictions on the topics she could be asked about.The lawsuit accuses Netflix producers of selectively editing portions of Banks’ interview to make it seem like she was responding to questions about a former contestant�...