Netflix has fired back at the supermodel Tyra Banks, who sued the streamer for defamation in June over her portrayal in a documentary series. Banks’s lawsuit against Netflix and filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan claimed that the three-part doc Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model was edited to manufacture a false and defamatory portrayal of her role as host, judge and executive producer on the long-running reality show. Banks requested a jury trial to determine damages for “loss of future business opportunities, loss of business income [and] other compounding losses,” while alleging that the docuseries has led to reputational damage to her businesses, specifically her ice cream brand Smize & Dream.
Now Netflix has attempted to have the lawsuit tossed out, vigorously defending the programme and arguing in a 28-page motion that Banks’s claims have no merit. The documentary simply turned that editorial lens back on ANTM and Banks. Her disagreement with the resulting portrayal does not make it defamatory.” Banks’s suit specifically argued that Reality Check made it seem as if she had no memory of events on America’s Next Top Model involving the aspiring model Shandi Sullivan, who alleged in Reality Check that she had been assaulted during filming of the show’s second season.
Netflix, however, have argued that the very end of Reality Check’s first episode depicts Banks saying “um” when asked whether she remembered Sullivan, and that her full answer (“I do remember her story”) was included in the opening of episode two. New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent. Banks said that she agreed to participate in the project because she wanted to have an honest discussion about long-standing criticisms of the show, including its allegedly exploitative nature as one of the first reality shows on TV. The lawsuit states that after Banks sat for a three-and-half-hour interview, only 16 minutes of her confessional was used and it was “stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed”.
Banks expressly agreed those decisions belonged to the filmmakers. Dissatisfaction with editorial judgments is not actionable defamation.” It continued: “Strip away the Complaint’s rhetoric of ‘manipulation’ and ‘surgical editing,’ and Banks’s theory reduces to a request for more airtime and an edit more to her liking. Defamation law does not permit that result, and courts do not second-guess editorial judgments merely because an interview subject would have preferred different ones.” Netflix’s lawyers also note that Banks had signed a standard waiver giving up creative control over the project.
In a statement to the media, Netflix declared that they stood by the documentary series and its directors. We stand behind Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model and will continue to vigorously defend it.” In a statement, Tom Locke and Clare Locke, lawyers for Banks, defended the supermodel and entrepreneur’s lawsuit against Netflix. It points to the editing of reality television to defend the editing of this documentary.
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