Tyra Banks’ Defamation Suit Against Netflix: Who Will Win?

0:00Evening, buyers remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyers remorse. More like buyers rejoice. Ugh, I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com. Campside media. Hi everyone. Welcome back to IMPAMAS this week. I'm Natalie Robomod. And I'm Vanessa McGregor-Yaudis. So this week we are talking about tire banks's lawsuit against Netflix and Netflix's response back to tire banks. Tira is alleging producers of reality check inside American Next Top Model constructed

1:01a false narrative through selective editing, deliberative mission and surgical manipulation of continuous footage. It's a lawsuit accusing them of...of defamation. Somebody once wrote that she has 275 smiles. She's like a star athlete who is perfected to jump shot or a curve ball. She studied, honed and mastered the smile. And her arsenal is the surprise smile, the angry but still smiling smile, the flirting with boyfriend smile. These are her secret weapons they can compel manipulate seduce. But let me tell you right now she is not smiling because these are very serious lawsuits. She decided not to release a public statement. She didn't take to Instagram to say she was edited. She released to this different kind of statement which is the lawsuit. She sued Netflix for defamation, saying that the producers manipulated footage of her to create false narratives. And that in doing so she suffered significant harm and damage. So it does feel a little rich coming from her. And of course she was also there through all of those cycles of America's top model where

2:02footage was being manipulated all the time. Exactly. And a few weeks ago Netflix hit back saying that exact same thing essentially. The Tira had long made the same kinds of editorial decisions she now attacks. And Netflix followed a motion to dismiss Tira's suit. And by the way, the Netflix's lawyers were going to read you some of this of what they wrote. They are like hot, bothered, upset, mad. They really hit back hard. Yeah. And we can get into why I think that is. So all right Vanessa, let's just get to it. Tell me what is didn't Tira Banks' lawsuit. All right. So she starts off by basically saying that she gave like the best interview ever to Netflix. She gave a three and a half hour interview and she really did her part to speak up for herself. She says that even afterwards one of the directors and executive producers of the documentary went to the press and said that Tira was given the opportunity to really go deep into the

3:09debates about America's next top model, share her side of the story. She was ready to speak and I think a lot of her answers were very honest. Now Tira's lawyer says that is only a partially true statement. Miss Banks did go deep. She did share her side. Her answers were very honest, but the story that viewers heard on the screen was a deceptive story that producers chose to tell. I mean this is the most like snapping lawsuit ever. I'm not gonna say I find it really untrue. But straight away I have 10 million questions. Like she makes a point of saying that only 16 minutes of her three and a half hour interview were used when initially the interview had only been scheduled for 30 minutes. So I'm thinking like did the crew have to stay for another three hours that they weren't expecting or budgeting? This is the interview that the whole documentary like rests upon. They needed her. She's the star.

4:10Come on. Like they were sites she was actually willing to like play ball and not just give some canned answers in 30 minutes. Do you think? Yeah. They were probably sites, but also like her being mad about how she is edited. It can't help but feel incredibly rich coming from her from somebody who was an EP of a reality TV show. But even before then, I mean she's upset about how the documentary was pitched to her. She was initially told that the documentary would unpack quote the show's legacy not as a take down but as a thoughtful in depth reflection on its influence, evolution and impact on fashion, television and culture and that it would be equal parts or thoughtative and celebratory. And she finds issue with who she says was actually involved in kind of creative parts of the documentary. Right. Well, even before that, she starts talking about how when she saw the pitch materials that had Netflix on it and she believed that Netflix, you know, was like this stamp of approval and she thought like it'll be a great documentary because they're involved.

5:12Do you think that's like a little disingenuous? This is the tricky stuff in the tricky ground that we've all been in as journalists or people trying to get any project made where you want somebody to participate. So you put it in the light that is most likely to get them to participate, but I don't know that you would necessarily always want that thrown back at you. Yeah. You have to tell the line of like, am I being disingenuous? Like, how can I make this sound appealing to this person? Obviously, Tire Banks would not have done this documentary if they came to her and said, hey, this is a take down of Tire Banks and a take down piece of American stuff to model. And she says that the producers told her this was an opportunity to share her personal journey addressing the challenges, successes and complexities of shaping a show that changed the landscape of reality, television and modeling. Okay, that seems like, you know, pretty vague and milk toast and that's, you know, that's fine. She read that.

6:12She thought, okay, that's good. I like that. And then as you said, she believes that, you know, there was this real sin, which is that the other personalities who were serving as consultants were concealed. Yes. So she was upset that the producers did not disclose that J Manuel, Miss J Alexander and Nigel Barker were not just interview subjects like she was, but that they were also ultimately credited as, quote, consultants on the project. But not only were they consultants, they also were the people she believes who first conceived of this idea for a documentary. So it was their idea from the beginning. But do we believe that like, oh, you had an idea for America's next top model document? Who hasn't had an idea for an America's next top model documentary? Like, it's very easy to take credit for that off to the fact and be like, this was my great idea after it was a success. Well, they might have gone around to production companies and say that three of us have agreed to tell our story together. Are you interested?

7:13I just, I just think it's a very convenient narrative to take credit for something after the fact. The origins of projects are always confusing and that seems like a potentially doubtful claim to me. Yes, maybe Nigel Barker says they did have an idea, but was it their idea that exactly was conceived and gone forward from the beginning? I don't know, because then why weren't they executive producers? Why weren't they creators of the documentary or something else? Like why weren't they directors? Fair enough, fair enough. Regardless, she says if she had known that they were so deeply involved, they were involved because they were consultants, right? And she had been excluded. She was not a consultant. It would have raised a red flag. She would have known she was being set up and she would not have participated. So I have been a consultant on several documentaries and consultant is such a vague all-encompassing term. Like sometimes it can mean that you're very involved in the story and sometimes it's just a random title that you negotiated so that you could get paid a little bit for it.

8:17But regardless, Ty was pissed about it. I mean, I would be pissed too. I mean, I think like, look, I think the surprising thing about this lawsuit is that she filed it, that it actually went down this way, that she actually participated in this to begin with. I mean, the fact that they were able to pull one over on Tyra Banks is pretty surprising, because Tyra Banks, while a ridiculous person, is also pretty savvy. Well, and she's been in showbiz for what? 20 years, 20 plus years at least. At least. So it's not as if she's a fresh lamb in the world of being in front of camera and how people sweet-talked to try to get you to do something. Like she's presumably a savvy operator. Well, it also just suggests that she was not networked in the America's top model community, right? Because there was nobody who reached out to her to say like, hey, you know, this is going

9:17to be really negative. This documentary, like, have you heard what's going on? I mean, presumably they were working on this documentary for at least a year, if not two or three. And nobody told Tyra to watch out. It's so baffling and raises questions of like, is this person just living in a world all of their own? Because this documentary was not the first critical thing about America's next-hop model. I mean, during the pandemic, people started rewatching the show and kind of like tweeting about it and making tick talks about how crazy it is to go back and watch. And I think Tyra had seen that criticism and had already made a couple comments about that or kind of addressed some of the questions around it. So the idea that she would be blindsided is like really surprising to me. I agree. I mean, but she does say that she was aware of some of the low back and that she had responded and like tweeted something. I mean, you know, celebrities sort of live in their own worlds. So she probably just didn't really process it that like, okay, this is a snowball

10:20rolling downhill. This criticism of the show and, you know, I should think about it. It's also sort of baffling that her agents and managers and people like that didn't say anything to her. Now this is also Tyra's side of the story. It is possible that Tyra, her back was up against a wall. She knew this thing was going forward. She knew it was going to be really negative. And she figured, you know what? Let me participate because otherwise I'm screwed. And now because of this lawsuit, she's doing like I was a little lamb to slaughter. You know, I think it's more likely it's that. Okay. All right. You know, that's my personal opinion. But I think what comes through in the lawsuit and what we need to talk about now is the shandy situation. So Tyra Banks is really upset about how her understanding or perception of the shandy Sullivan situation is depicted. If you didn't watch the documentary, Shandy Sullivan was a contestant on America's next

11:22top model. And what happened was one night when they were in Italy, a bunch of male models came over. There was a lot of drinking and shandy in the documentary would essentially say that she was blacked out and therefore unable to consent. We were just like talking, drinking. It was wonderful talking. The youth. The life. I don't think I'd eat anything at all or had any sleep. I remember getting the hot tub. I remember April. Just say he's getting the hot tub. And then I just remember the guy looking at me and I looked at him and I was pretty drunk at that point. Everything kind of after that is just a blur. Tyra Banks' issue is that she says the directors never asked her a single question that framed what happened to Shandy as non-concentral.

12:24So Tyra feels that this means that in the documentary she comes off as looking callous and as kind of seeming to not care about an apparent sexual assault that becomes a really critical point in the documentary that kind of shows what appears to be the callousness of production that they wouldn't have intervened or wouldn't have stepped in. And I don't know. I mean up until this point Tyra says that Shandy had never publicly discussed this interaction as non-concentral. So Tyra just feels like she was done dirty. But is that true that Shandy had never discussed it in that way before? Luckily I don't know. I haven't looked that up and gone back through that. The one really important thing here is that the documentary also shows a cut of Tyra Banks talking to the models after the fact about cheating. I had one guy that cheated on me in Milano. He was a male model child. And I just hurt me so much. But now I always tell my man like don't cheat. Flirt.

13:24So much with the girl and then come home and do me. And Tyra wants to make explicitly clear that she did not initiate the conversation around cheating, which I had actually thought she had when I watched the clip. In summary Tyra says that the producers purposely withheld the information that Shandy had come to view the events in Milano as a sexual assault. And Tyra feels that having that framing withheld from her meant that she wasn't able to react fully. Right. But Tyra's lawyer says she, Tyra, respects Miss Sullivan, Shandy's, right to speak up in her own words. The issue is not her sharing her views and speaking up. The issue is that the producer never asked a single question of Tyra that framed the encounter as non-consensual. So Tyra's answers were given as part of a discussion that she was misled to believe was about regret and infidelity, which was the only framing she heard about.

14:25So I mean, I think she has a point there. You know, if you're going to accuse somebody of being callous about somebody else's sexual assault, you should probably say, did you realize this was a sexual assault? Or it seems like you didn't take this sexual assault seriously enough or you didn't take this situation seriously enough. Did you ever think this was a sexual assault? I don't know. There's a million different ways to formulate a question. They could have said, Shandy regretted it. What about this stuff about infidelity? Blah blah blah. Do you now think it's possible that that was a sexual assault? Evening, buyers remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyers remorse. Or like buyers rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out.

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16:30That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash infamous. And how to answer. Yeah, but what you're describing is more journalistic than documentary, I would argue, and that's kind of the crux of this issue. In journalism, there's such a thing as no surprises policy where you kind of let people know what's coming in a story. You give them a chance to react to it or comment on any allegation or anything sad about them. But that doesn't really always happen in documentary. In documentary, you often want to get people's first reactions or want to have them be surprised or you want to create tension between what participants know. There's that trope of being shown footage on an iPad and having to react to it for the first time. That wouldn't fly in no surprises journalism. I mean, I would just say it is possible that legally there's not an issue if you are being

17:32accused of covering up a sexual assault, but it certainly sounds not great to me. And I was almost surprised in these legal documents that she didn't say that, that she didn't say if I actually did what you think I did, that would be criminal. And you would have been accusing me of a criminal act, which we all know is not allowed unless you allow somebody to respond, right? And even then, a little questionable. The thing is they did use her answer. They did actually use her answer. And her answer was, um, they said, do you remember Shandy? The situation was Shandy and she said, um, I do remember it, right? So they use her um to make her look like she doesn't know what she's talking about. They don't use the second part of that statement in the first episode, right? In the first episode viewers only see arm. It's a cliffhanger. And then second episode, they say, they have her say, I do know about this.

18:35You remember the story was Shandy? Um, I do remember her story. It's a little difficult for me to talk about production because that's not my territory. I'm not sure that's kosher. I disagree. Like, don't you think that this is what, that is just the standard of reality TV editing, is that you edit the um before the ad break or before the break into the next episode so that, like, people are hooked. An ad break is one thing going into an entirely new episode is another. But what is the difference between an ad break and an episode break in on Netflix? Well, okay, because you're saying Netflix just loads the next episode. Yeah, it's bingeable. It just loads up the next episode straight away. So I would argue that it's not that different, but I don't know. I do, I do see, I do see your point, but I also see the argument that this is within the realm of editing. And ultimately, which we can get to what Netflix said in response, ultimately,

19:37Tyra did sign away her right to be edited in any way the producers decided to. Correct. She did. Yes. And she also says that before she decided to take this legal action, she asked them, can I have access to the unedited footage of my own interview under whatever conditions they chose and let's work together to correct the record. In other words, let me pick some clips and put them out so you can see and fool what I said, right? This request was refused. You're listening to infamous from campsite media. So that was Tyra's lawsuit, but how did Netflix respond? So Netflix responded with their own special motion to strike and motion to dismiss, which came out in August, although it sounds like it's going to be heard on October 30th in California in LA. They opened their lawsuit interestingly with a bibliography of all of these other cases that show that

20:40there's no way in hell she was defamed. Sometimes you see those like at the end of somebody's motion, but they put those right in front. Here's dozens and dozens of cases where the court decided no, that person was not defamed. So they basically started by saying she had this three and a half hour interview as we discussed, and she signed an agreement afterwards, granting the filmmakers the right to edit the interview footage, acknowledging she had no right to review or approve the finished documentary and releasing all claims from it, including her claims that she's bringing now defamation of false late. And so they're basically saying these were all ordinary editorial decisions. Everything you and I just talked about, that's just the way it's done. Documentary filmmakers decide who to interview, what to ask, etc. And dissatisfaction with those editorial judgments is not actionable. Yes. You know, they explicitly turn it back around on her that she's had a lifetime of making the same kinds of editorial decisions

21:45she now attacks in their words, meaning including like what footage to include, what to omit, and how to present competing narratives. So it's basically, you know, nice try, but no to any of Tyra's claims. Yeah. And they're just like our documentary basically just turned back that editorial lens on to her. Sorry. Sorry, not sorry. But you know, I mean, the language is pretty barbed, like Netflix is coming out swinging, and I wonder if that's, I mean, why do you think that is? I have some thoughts on my own. I mean, I wouldn't say that they're really worried about this, but there is like a menace in this document that makes me think that they are a little bit worried. You know, they're a little bit worried about all of her claims about how the producers acted, you know, very few of which are actually addressed in their documents. So it makes me wonder if a lot of that stuff is true.

22:46Yeah, I mean, Netflix is definitely coming out swinging in their response. And I really think that's because of the precedent Tyra's case would set. If it succeeded in any way, think about how many documentaries they have. What would happen to their business if so many of the people in those documentaries came forward and said, Hey, I don't like the way I was presented and you actually defame me. That would be a huge problem and a huge business cost for Netflix. Sure. Not to mention like they're already in other litigation over baby reindeer. I don't know if you watched or remembered that series. I do. I and I did watch it, which is basically about a stalker, about a woman who becomes a stalker. Yes. And it, you know, it says that it's based on a true story. And since it came out, the woman who says she's the basis for the character has come out and sued them. And it's a really big, expensive $170 million lawsuit over defamation, negligence and privacy violations. So they do not want to let anything fall through the cracks here.

23:50They do not want a set of precedent that would allow them to be liable for any of this stuff. But the other part that Netflix addresses in their lawsuit that is something that TireBanks brought up was this issue of the album. So she was basically upset that her image was used to promote the soundtrack for this documentary. What did Netflix say in response to that? So Netflix released this 26 track soundtrack album, right, called Reality Check inside America's Next Top Model. And it's the soundtrack from the Netflix documentary series. And on that cover, there's a bunch of the people who are in the documentary. And the biggest image is TireBanks, right? And so her ideas basically, this makes it look like I endorse this, I endorse this album. And what is this unlicensed photo? And they're like, well, this is just like a still from the interview that you gave us were allowed to use it, you know? Yeah, it basically says that this is

24:52like covered within the use of her, like, does an image for in context, publicity and promotion. So they're saying like, nothing to see here. This is fine. So what do you think is going to happen here? I mean, do you think this was just Tire's way of getting out her side of the story? And now she's going to sort of back off. Or do you think this is actually going to go forward? I don't know. I personally don't think this is going to go forward reading this. I feel like her case is going to get dismissed. That's just my gut. And I could totally be wrong. But I just think that this was a way for her to make a public statement without releasing a iPhone notes app press release kind of about. Right. Okay. You know, like, I think this was her way to say, I'm a serious person. And therefore I'm doing this in a serious way by engaging lawyers. That's how seriously I take this. Right. You can't, you can't, you know, take me down that easily. Right. I'm here to protect my character. But it's like, maybe, you know, who knows how upset she really, like she does seem to be

25:56pretty upset. And that could be a reason to keep, to keep going. But also like, if there is anything to this case, it would more likely be settled out of court than anything else. That's usually how these things go. So I don't know. I'm not expecting too much. What about you? I think it's possible that this just kind of disappears. Do you think that there'll ever be another next top model? I don't think there's an appetite for it. I really don't. I don't think. Well, never say never. Never say never. Yeah. I mean, maybe who knows? We could be wrong. And this is actually just all some, some strange backwards promotion for the next season, where like these people will come together and do something together. Yeah. You never know. I mean, so after the break, let we'll come back and we're going to talk about if you can really account Tyra Banks out. Who is Tyra Banks really? And what does the future hold for her? I can't believe Labor Day is almost here. I'm not ready to let Summer go just yet. We've got the

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27:59Natalie knows a lot more about Tyra Banks than I do. So Natalie, school me on this. I know she's from LA. I know she was a model very early. I do have some knowledge about the novel she wrote later in life, which we're definitely going to get into, which is great, right? But tell me about her. So you're exactly right. Tyra Banks, she grew up in LA. There's different accounts of how well off she was growing up. According to a 2006 Forbes profile, she lived with her younger brother and her mom in a one bedroom apartment in Englewood, which is a pretty rough section of LA at the time. So that suggests that she was not that well off, but according to Vanity Fair, she grew up middle class. Her mom was a medical photographer. Her dad, a computer consultant. Tyra has said, I have a poverty demon quote, meaning that there's just this sort of drive to kind of always be working and always be wanting to make money and worried if she can afford things when now she certainly can. The way that Tyra tells her own story and her own mythology was that she had a lot of

29:02get up and go from the jump. So she says that she flew to Paris alone when she was 17 and just wield herself into becoming a model. She graduated from high school, but she wanted to give herself a year to make it as a model before she went to college. And she says that she was five foot 11, she was skinny. It was hard for her to put on weight. That thing that model was always saying that is infuriating. She was very skinny. I have seen some of those pictures of her very young, you know, she was like very skinny. Yes, but also, you know, she has this sort of very light caramel skin. She's got these feline green eyes. And very quickly, I mean, despite all of the obstacles that models of color face, especially back then, she was having loads of fittings and working on stop for carlager fellow Chanel, you say, well, wrong. This was Paris in the 90s. I mean, it was a very heady time. A time that also would later come to light that it was a time of a lot of abuse that

30:04these models were facing. But there was certainly a ton of drinking and drugs and partying. A lot of going out to this nightclub called Le Bandouche. That was not what Tyra was doing. I mean, she says she was in butt by 10 and that I was a good girl. You know, she claims to never have taken a sip of alcohol, except for quote, the neck of a wine cooler when she was 12, never to have smoked a cigarette or done any drugs. But I mean, really like she was a ground breaking model. I mean, she did these fashion runways, but also she became the first black woman to appear on the cover of sports illustrated and GQ. Those are her two main claims to fame. And at her peak, I mean, she was a big earner. She was making $50,000 a day and had a lingerie contract for $4 million. But she, I think, had the foresight to know that you don't get to be a model forever. There's a lifespan and an expiry date on that. So she starts to try other things. She started guest starring in lots of little

31:05sitcoms and some movies, including Kayaugly. And then she tried to remake herself as Mariah Carey. She hired Mariah Carey's music manager. Oh my god, I did not know she had a musical career. Yeah, no idea. She released a single, shake your body. Wow. The video is very like Britney Spears slave for you, that era of music video choreography. So her music career wasn't ever really gonna go anywhere. But she pretty quickly starts to try and model herself after the other grand dom of television at this time, who was, of course, Oprah Winfrey. So in 1999, she starts appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show as a quote youth correspondent, which is a fantastic title. And then, you know, in 2003, America's next top model debut. Yeah, I mean, she has within her this thing, you know, she had to describe before she got really tall and, you know, became a model. She was like a mean little girl. She was a bully. She sort of has this thing in her that's like not,

32:10not all that nice. And you sort of see that coming out next up model. But she also, you know, is exuberant and so excited that this is really happening. And she's really like seizing the day, you know, she told somebody once just a year ago, I was a model. You know what I'm saying? I was walking down the runway in my friggin panties for Victoria's Secret. And now Time Magazine is saying I'm one of the most influential people in the world. So, you know, it was quite a cultural moment. But there was always this strange mix of Tyra both on top model and afterwards, which was that she would simultaneously be this harsh critic of all these girls. And then also try and be kind of a motherly maternal figure to them. And she would both try to be relatable. But also this incredible gorgeous supermodel that she was. So there were all these contradictions tied up within her. And I think those really came to the fore in her talk show,

33:13Tyra Bank Show, which she she started in 2005. Now, I actually watched the Tyra Bank show when I was a teenager. In my memory, it came on after Oprah. I don't know if that's correct. But I do remember watching it after school. And it was just this absurd talk show in which Tyra would do all these strange stunts. I mean, she paraded around in a fat suit. She brought on a doctor to do a sonogram and prove that she didn't have breast implants. This kind of will give you a sense of the absurdity of the show. The premise of this is that she says that a dog bit her. So here's a little weird, but I'm okay. I'm just thirsty. So can we pause for a second? So Tyra starts foaming at the mouth.

34:17That's Tyra Barking. What? This seems like an acting challenge on RuPaul's drag race. But it's just some kind of skit that she's doing. I mean, she sort of is a character, right? Like, I mean, she's playing a character. A character that's been created over time. You know, as you said earlier, like she says she never goes out or anything like that. And then she's like this incredibly cartoonish, super outrageous person on television. So while she's doing the Tyra Bank show, she tries to get other TV projects off the ground. She tried to pit to show about what happens to a top model loser after she goes back to her obscure life. But none of them really managed to work. The talk show gets cancelled in 2010. And while in 2010, America's next top model is still ongoing, viewership kind of falls off a cliff. It stops being culturally relevant and it stops really being watched. Yeah, I mean, she writes this book

35:18that I referenced before. I mean, this YA novel, Model Land, which is also ghost-ridden, but she talks a lot about writing and how much she liked writing. I think people don't really put enough emphasis on writing and how amazing and empowering writing is. And the main character is named Tukki Delacrem. She's got this idea that it's going to be this synergistic book. So she basically wants to do this live experience in Santa Monica with Disney Imagineers. She wants to do a movie with Universal. It's such a campy, crazy book that people actually get really into it. But then she sells a scripted show, TV show called Five Head, which is about her large forehead, like so many heads, I guess, is the idea to ABC about her awkward teenage years, which does not happen. Also for the release of Model Land just to go back, she also made this song that actually would go viral and be resurfaced after the Netflix documentary. A song called Model Land,

36:21which sounds very... It's just this bizarre electronic song with like a vocoder voice over it that kind of jingled angles and it's Tyra speaking singing and not really making much sense. And it's only a minute and 23 seconds on YouTube and it is just absolutely bizarre. Not doing her any favors in terms of creating a coherent kind of strategy. She goes and takes this three-week course at Harvard, the owner of President Management Program. It is not a degree, it is a certificate. But after she does this course, she starts repeatedly saying, you know, I went to Harvard, she starts name-dropping Harvard almost at any point. And she kind of enters her Girlboss era where she starts a slew of businesses that don't really go anywhere. The first of which is this app, Smise in 2013. This is when apps were all the rage and everybody had an app for everything.

37:24She launched this kind of ill-conceived Smise app that would teach you how to smise. And then in 2014, this was really interesting to me. And I think has kind of been forgotten to the sounds of time. But she launched a beauty company, Tyra Beauty, which was what some have called a multi-level marketing company. And this is interesting because it actually was a good idea. Rihanna would launch Fenty Beauty three years later in 2017. And then every celebrity now, you know, has their own beauty brand. But the business model seems to have been the problem. It was very much a situation where people have to pay to get the products and then had to sell them to their friends and kind of sign more people up, which sort of led to this very harsh cut article with the headline, I made a whopping $27.75 selling Tyra Banks as beauty products. That was the headline. So during all of this time, I mean, America's next top model is still going on even with fewer and fewer viewers. It seems

38:26every season. In 2016, she quits the show. She becomes a new mom to her son, York via gestational target. And then she comes back in 2017 back to America's next top model. And then she kind of disappears a little bit. Like if you're paying close attention, she's in a TV movie, go to life size two. But she's hosting Dancing with the Stars. But like nobody's really paying attention to her. She starts this ice cream company that's at first called, called Smise Cream, which never really made sense to me, like a model having an ice cream company. It's like when Maria Sharapova had a sweet, like a candy brand. It just never really tracked. But that becomes Smising Dream. And she kind of went away until late 2025, I would say, when she went viral for this completely genius rage bait item of hot ice cream. Oh my god, tell me what is that? So this is like a so-called

39:26innovation of Smising Dream hot ice cream, which as far as I can tell is basically just hot chocolate. You know, it's just a beverage. Okay. A dairy based warm beverage. Like, but of course, it made everybody furious of like, what is hot ice cream? Tyroso stupid for calling this hot ice cream. It's just hot chocolate blah blah. But it succeeded in getting her ice cream company into the headlines at the very least. And then came the Netflix documentary. So where do you think she goes from here? I don't know because I think there's, I think it's going to be really hard for her to come back as a very reputable and respected business person. I don't know if she can come back as the host of America's next top model. Have it work in the way that it worked back in the day. Whether she'd ever want to be kind of a hired hand on someone else's show is unclear to me, you know, it might seem like a step down to her. And maybe she's just happy doing her hot ice cream. I think she still wants to be in the spotlight. But, you know, I don't

40:31know if we're just going to see her on like, traders, you know, one of those shows where, oh my god, here she is. That's actually not a bad idea. She could maybe, she could maybe get everybody back. I would actually be very surprised if a cool hasn't gone in from traders. Because she could get everybody back on her side by kind of becoming a villain and then becoming beloved and camp in that way. Well, everyone, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you have ideas about what you think Tyra should do next and you think we're right or you think we're wrong, please check out our Instagram, which is at infamous pod, infamous pod. Yes, that's how it goes, infamous pod. And let us know all your thoughts and we will see you next week.

41:36It's not great for the tender fire. Sandra Bullock. Here's the thing about magic. It won't be silenced. Nicole Kidman. Everything is going to be okay. Maybe it's going to be okay, just like it was when we had to bury a corpse under a roast bush. Different. The practical magic too. RZPG13. Maybe an appropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters September 10th.