Tyra Banks is judging the upcoming 22nd series of Project Runway on Bravo.
The “America’s Next Top Model” creator and supermodel will join Heidi Klum, Law Roach and Nina Garcia on “Project Runway” as a recurring judge. Christian Siriano will also return as a mentor for the designers. She had appeared on the last season as a guest judge.
The trailer dropped today for the upcoming series, promising to be a “bigger, bolder and more beautiful” take on the reality television favourite.
Everything We Know About Season 22 Of Project Runway
The new season will see 22 designers compete for the prizes and the title.
The lineup includes Joseph McRae, two “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alumnis, Plane Jane and Q, Miss Universe 2022 R’Bonney Nola and “Next in Fashion” runner-up Bao Tranchi.
Joining the judges this season as guests are singer Ciara, designer Fausto Puglisi, rapper Ice Spice, supermodel Iman, Man Man actress Kiernan Shipka and All’s Fair star Niecy Nash. Also judging the runway are The Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev, designer Sergio Hudson, fashion designer Willy Chavarria and model Winnie Harlow.
Plus, season 22 of the design competition will also feature a “Dancing with the Stars” crossover episode starring Brandon Armstrong, Alan Bersten, Val Chmerkovskiy, Jenna Johnson, Emma Slater, Ezra Sosa, Britt Stewart and Julianne Hough walking the runway as models.
Tyra Bank’s History In Reality TV
Getty“Project Runway” is not Tyra’s first foray into reality TV judging. She has been on our screen for almost two decade but it has not been a smooth ride.
Although already a well-known name in the world of fashion, Tyra became a household name when she created and hosted “America’s Next Top Model.” The show saw young women and later men, compete for a modelling contract.
The show later became a controversial favorite as people watched it in the 2020s through a different lens. Suddenly, Tyra and the judges’ bodyshaming and blackface weren’t as funny. Recently, Netflix released a documentary called “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model,” breaking down the show’s impact on the young contestants.
In her talking head, Tyra appeared unbothered by stories of women being poorly treated by producers and appeared not to take responsibility for the show. The model and entrepreneur recently filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix and the directors of the docuseries. She claims that she was manipulated and misrepresented.
“The producers used what could be stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed,” reads the suit. “The accountability Banks took ended up on the cutting room floor.”
Banks claims that she asked Netflix and the producers of the series for access to the unedited footage of her 3½-hour interview. She also claims she proposed they work together to “correct the record.”
“Had they agreed, Ms. Banks could have made the truth public and this litigation would likely have been unnecessary,” reads the suit.
Tyra’s job hosting “Dancing With The Stars” also wasn’t as smooth as she liked. She hosted the dancing competition for three seasons, replacing the beloved Tom Bergeron. She wasn’t a popular choice and frequently made mistakes on live TV, but her co-host believed she was “set up.”
“Everything about her first two seasons was a setup for failure,” her co-host Alfonso Ribeiro said, per E! News. “Not that it was a failure, because the show still did well. But I feel like for the audience, they didn’t get to see what it felt like before because the setup was completely different.”
