Watch: Ex-‘Top Model’ Host Tyra Banks ‘Reality Check’ Video Edits In Response To Netflix

Back in her America’s Next Top Model days, Tyra Banks used to love to tell viewers and contestants that “every hallway is a runway.” Looks like when it comes to the supermodel and her legal showdown with Netflix and the directors of the docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, every filing is a battlefront too.

In today’s case, that battlefront includes video receipts.

Facing an effort by Netflix to toss out Banks’ June-filed defamation suit over her depiction in the three-part docuseries directed by Daniel Sivan and Mor Loushy, the ANTM creator and her Clare Locke lawyers hit back hard Tuesday with an opposition filing full of some pretty stark video to back up their case that Netflix and the Reality Check filmmakers “through selective deletion, rearrangement, and other editing techniques” distinctly altered Banks’ words and reaction.

Specifically, Banks and her attorneys point to the de facto non-response the model is shown giving to whether or not she knew about a sexual assault of ANTM participant Shandi Sullivan. Today’s filing and accompanying videos also spotlights a 2004 chat with Sullivan over infidelity — a conversation that in Reality Check comes across as instigated by Banks.

Take a look at what was shown in Reality Check and what was actually filmed:

In case you missed it, the opposition filing describes the comparison: “After conveying to viewers Sullivan’s story of sexual assault, Banks was asked on camera, ‘You remember the story with Shandi?’ Banks nodded and said, ‘Um … I do remember her story.’ Episode 1 airs the question. It airs the “Um.” It removes the nod from between them, cuts the answer, and goes to black. Banks is left apparently unable to say whether she remembers the assault of a contestant on her own show. The nod was not cut off. It was cut out.”

Citing “willful misconduct,” today’s opposition to Netflix and the directors’ anti-SLAPP motion insists that the “Defendants held the full footage, understood that it contradicted the impressions they were creating, and cut it for the purpose of conveying those false impressions.”

To that, there’s the apparent cheat on that cheating conversation from 22 years ago:

In today’s L.A. Superior Court filing, Banks’ team says: “As originally broadcast, Sullivan asks Banks whether she has ever cheated or been cheated on. Banks answers, sees Sullivan tearing up, and asks whether she is okay. The Docuseries deletes Sullivan’s question, reverses the order, and adds a commentator to tell viewers that “it is not a coincidence that she starts talking about cheating” and that she has “producers in her ear.” Sullivan raised the subject. The Docuseries say Banks did.”

Suing Netflix, 89 Blocks Holdings, EverWonder Studio, Netflix Music, Loushy and Sivan for false light, defamation by implication, breach of contract and false endorsement, Banks received blowback after Reality Check debuted in February. As Banks claimed earlier in the summer in her initial complaint, that fallout resulted in “loss of future business opportunities, loss of business income, other compounding losses,” “severe reputational harm” and “significant mental anguish.”

With both sides dug in, the matter of the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher-represented Netflix’s dismissal will be heard in a Los Angeles court October 30.

Asked for a response to Banks’ filing today, Netflix presented the statement it released more than two months ago when the all started.

“Directors Daniel Sivan and Mor Loushy are respected documentarians who thoroughly interviewed the people behind America’s Next Top Model,” a Netflix spokesperson said today, like before. “Tyra Banks was given the opportunity to speak openly about her experience and the creators fairly presented her perspective alongside those of every other participant shown in this documentary. We stand behind Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model and will continue to vigorously defend it.”