Tyra Banks slammed by former co-star: ‘Not a friendly lady’

Tyra Banks’ former co-star has slammed the model in a scathing statement, exposing her alleged behaviour on-set of their hit show.

Janice Dickinson has called out Tyra Banks for her alleged behaviour on-set of America’s Next Top Model, further lifting the lid on the feud between the two former judges.

“She’s not a friendly lady,” Dickinson, 69, said about Banks, 50, on an episode of The Bachelorette star Kaitlyn Bristowe’s Off the Vine podcast.

Bristowe, 39, recalled that she had little interaction with Banks when she was on Dancing With the Stars in 2020, which was Banks’ first season hosting the US show.

“You’re too beautiful for her,” Dickinson told Bristowe. “She does not like beautiful women.”

Janice Dickinson (left) and Tyra Banks on America's Next Top Model.

Looking back on their history, Dickinson admitted that she “tortured” Banks when they did Top Model together in the mid-2000s.

“Because, if she was going to be mean to the girls — I saw her ploy, just so I could remain under the radar,” Dickinson recalled. “I’d tell her things like, ‘I did Vogue, you did Elle.’”

Dickinson also claimed that Banks was “always late” to the show’s set.

She said the Life-Size star kept everyone “waiting for hours and hours” when they were filming the final episodes of Season 4 in Cape Town, South Africa, without airconditioning.

“How did she get away with all that?” Bristowe asked.

“It was her show,” said Dickinson. “She was the EP.”

Dickinson added: “She claims she created it, but she did not. I met the guy who created it.”

A source close to the former production told theNew York Post: “It’s sad and childish that Janice is trying to drag Tyra, but unsurprising as she has a history of speaking negatively about her.”

The glamorous duo were co-judges in earlier seasons of Top Model.

Banks has also said previously that she keeps in touch with some contestants from the show.

The Post has reached out to Banks’ rep for comment.

Dickinson previously spoke about her issues with Banks on the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2015.

“Tyra’s a tough businesswoman, and she does great TV. I respect her as a woman,” the supermodel said at the time. “I’ve said some pretty bad things about her in the past because I’d been fired, and I was very hurt that I’d been fired, so I acted out.

“That’s not when I acted in a sober-like fashion. I really apologise to you, Tyra, for the things I might’ve said to you, because she is a great lady, and thanks to her, I’ve had a very successful career on television.”

In April 2023, Dickinson said in an interview with Queerty that the models’ contentious relationship led to Dickinson being fired from the show.

“Things that I’ve written in my book [No Lifeguard on Duty], she just basically took it out word for word. ‘Smize with your eyes’ and you know, things like that,’” Dickinson claimed. “After a couple of years, I went up to Tyra politely and asked her for parity as a writer. If you want to use what I’ve written, which you have, I’ve got a lot more ideas. I can become a producer as well as work on the panel for some of the shoots, which would be doable. And she turned her back on me for that. And then I got fired the next season.”

Dickinson and Banks were both blasted online in 2022 after controversial moments from the supermodel series resurfaced on the internet.

One of the clips showed the judges criticising Season 3 contestant Kelle Jacob — who is black — for her “horrendous” fashion because of her darker complexion.

In response to the backlash, Dickinson said in an Instagram video that she doesn’t regret how she treated the contestants on the show.

“It was acting. And that’s that,” she said.

This story originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission