Angelea Preston and Adrianne Curry have reacted to Tyra Banks’ legal action against Netflix and Reality Check producers, disputing claims that the docuseries relied on “selective editing” and omitted key footage—while Preston pushes Banks to release alleged ma
When Tyra Banks filed her complaint over how Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model portrayed her, Angelea Preston wasn’t surprised that the fight found its way back to the edit. But she was quick to turn it into a personal challenge.
One day after Banks’ lawsuit landed, Preston—who competed on America’s Next Top Model and later returned for the all-star cycle 17 edition—told Entertainment Weekly that Banks now knows what it feels like when contestants believe the footage tells a story that doesn’t match what actually happened.
“Now you know how we feel. It’s kind of like a taste of your own medicine. in a way. ” Preston said in a phone interview. pointing specifically to language in Banks’ filing about “surgical manipulation” and “selective editing.” Preston also urged Banks to release alleged footage tied to Preston’s own cycle 17 victory. an outcome Preston has said was stripped from the final broadcast.
The backdrop is messy and deeply familiar to longtime ANTM viewers. Banks’ legal action targets Netflix and Reality Check filmmakers over allegations that the three-part series created a “false narrative” about her through what the complaint describes as “selective editing. deliberate omission. and surgical manipulation of continuous footage.” Banks also alleges that when she repeatedly requested footage from her interview participation. she was denied access to “complete. unedited footage. ” and that this refusal has prevented the “full truth” from becoming public.
In Preston’s retelling, the stakes are practical, not just reputational. She asked whether Banks would put the footage forward—and pressed for money tied to a claim she says she is still owed.
“Can I see the footage?. Can I see it?” Preston said. again referencing the complaint’s “false narrative” language as she alleged the show did the same to her at the end of cycle 17. “Tyra, you want Netflix to release the footage?. Can you release the footage of me winning?. If you win or settle with Netflix, can you give me my $100,000?. You’ve got it now, because you’re a millionaire. Also, can I finally get my money?. Because I have credit card debt, and I’m a single mother out here raising a little Black boy. Girl!. Times are hard out here.”.
Preston is not only responding as a former contestant. She says she has lived the consequences of a reality-show version of events that, in her account, was rewritten after the fact.
She first competed on ANTM cycle 14 and finished by tying for third place. She later returned for the all-star cycle 17 edition. which she previously told Entertainment Weekly she won at a ceremony in Greece. But Preston has said that her victory was later stripped. In a 2023 interview. she alleged that producers used her admitted engagement in past sex work as a reason to remove her title. reshoot the finale in the United States—where Lisa D’Amato. from cycle 5. was crowned winner in footage that aired—and scrap all alleged video of Preston’s victory.
Banks and executive producer Ken Mok declined to comment on Preston’s allegation to Entertainment Weekly in 2023. Representatives for producer Laura Fuest Silva did not respond to repeated requests for comment at the time.
A second ANTM winner also weighed in, sharpening the confrontation from a different angle.
Adrianne Curry, who won cycle 1, posted her reaction in a separate social media video. “Bitch!. For real. girl?” Curry said as she shaded Banks’ legal action against filmmakers behind Netflix’s Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. Curry framed the lawsuit as the same issue that contestants have alleged about ANTM and its production company for years.
In another social media post, Curry suggested Banks’ move mirrored long-running complaints. “I read that Tyra Banks is suing Netflix because she didn’t like being edited. ” Curry said in a short Instagram video. chuckling as she recounted the information. “Bitch!. For real girl?” She laughed again at the development.
Preston told Entertainment Weekly that if Banks’ filing is true, it would be “karma” for what multiple ANTM contestants have alleged over the years about selective editing and “situational manipulation” across the show’s 24-cycle run.
Her remarks landed in a moment where the edit itself has become the battleground—where what was captured, what was shown, and what was withheld are at the center of the dispute.
In the complaint. Banks’ team alleges that she provided over three hours of interview material. with only 16 minutes used in the final product. The filing claims her quotes were largely “stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed.”.
Banks’ filing also seeks damages tied to what the complaint says were other misuses of her image. The lawsuit includes allegations that Netflix used Banks’ likeness to promote a soundtrack album cover.
The legal paper also targets how Banks says the show portrayed her response to another contestant’s story—cycle 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan. Sullivan previously told Entertainment Weekly that she had sex with a local man invited to the models’ penthouse. She said the encounter was filmed. and that she later appeared in an emotional phone call with her boyfriend at the time.
In ANTM’s broadcast, Sullivan says the footage was presented on air as a salacious scandal. In Reality Check, the same story was presented as an assault.
Banks’ complaint argues the series intentionally misrepresented her reaction to Sullivan’s allegations. And in a 2023 statement to Entertainment Weekly about Sullivan’s experience. a spokesperson for Banks said the host “played no role in the events that occurred this night. Everyone, including production, was surprised to find out what had transpired.”.
Preston’s own explanation for why so many contestants have spoken out leans on a blunt reality: once the final episode ends, they’re alone.
Now working in New York as a news producer and journalist. Preston speculated that the reason models kept speaking after the show aired was that they had to figure things out themselves. She said models “had to figure it the f— out after” the show ended and added, “We had no help. After your final episode airs, you’re out there on your own.”.
She added that “a lot of doors were closed in our faces because we participated. ” tying it to what many contestants have described as the “ANTM stigma” in the fashion industry. In the early aughts. models claim major fashion houses and commercial clients didn’t want to work with people whose names had been shaped by reality television.
Preston also pointed to the example of RuPaul’s Drag Race, describing it as a platform that keeps queens working rather than shutting them out after the show’s spotlight moves on.
“I always go back to RuPaul’s Drag Race. I see what RuPaul has done for the queens on that show. They go on tours, they are out here, she’s used them in her movie [Stop!. That!. Train!] that she’s got out now, she did AJ and the Queen on Netflix,” Preston said. “These queens are working. That should’ve been us with the show.”.
As Banks presses Netflix and the producers over edits and alleged withheld footage, Preston and Curry’s reactions suggest the argument isn’t only about one docuseries.
For Preston, it’s about a question she keeps coming back to: whether the full, uncut picture will ever be allowed to speak—especially when the people most affected say the version the public saw wasn’t the whole truth.
Tyra Banks Netflix Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model America’s Next Top Model Angelea Preston Adrianne Curry selective editing lawsuit cycle 17 Lisa D’Amato