Most celebrities treat a few extra pounds like a scandal that needs a publicist. Tyra Banks treated hers like a menu. In April 2020, sitting in front of a Harper’s Bazaar camera with a hollowed-out bagel, she said it plainly: “I am 25 pounds heavier than I was on the cover of a very famous swimsuit magazine that came out last year.” Then she kept eating, which I respect enormously.
Six years on, the line still holds up better than most of the headlines it produced. Here is what she actually said, what the old rumors got wrong, and what Banks, now 52 and living in Sydney, is busy with instead.
The swimsuit cover that set the yardstick
The number 25 only makes sense next to the cover it was measured against. In May 2019 Banks came out of modeling retirement to front the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue at 45. It was her third SI Swimsuit cover: the first came in 1996, and in 1997 she became the first Black woman to cover the issue on her own. (An earlier version of this page called the 2019 cover a first; it was a homecoming, not a debut.)
At the time she told Good Morning America, “My first one was 23 years ago, how crazy is that.” My read: an SI cover at 45 is a career statement, not a body goal, and treating it as a baseline to “fall” from was always the internet’s framing, never hers.
“It will come off one day, but not today”
The quote everyone remembers comes from Harper’s Bazaar’s Food Diaries, posted on April 3, 2020. Banks called food her hobby and was unusually specific about it: hunting new restaurants, a personal rule that she cannot return to the same restaurant for six months, food festivals. “I have a very interesting relationship with food,” she said. “I have to say that it is one of the most important things in my life.”
Then came the weight, and the shrug that made the clip travel: “It will come off one day, but not today.” What strikes me is the tone. No apology, no “journey”, no before-and-after promise. She described her body the way most of us describe a messy closet: noted, not urgent.
The old version of this article also claimed she blamed burgers after long workdays and hinted at cosmetic procedures. I could not find either in anything Banks said on the record, so both are gone.
She has been answering this question since 2007
None of this was new for her. In 2007, after tabloids ran unflattering beach photos, Banks answered on her own talk show with a line that is still quoted: “Kiss my fat a–.” She later told ET she felt “a responsibility” in that moment: “I wasn’t just thinking ratings.”
Fair is fair, though. America’s Next Top Model, the show she created and hosted, has been reassessed for its own treatment of contestants’ bodies, and Banks has acknowledged “the insensitivity of past ANTM moments” and “some really off choices.” That history came back in February 2026, when Netflix released the docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. In June 2026 Banks sued Netflix, the directors and EverWonder Studio in federal court in Los Angeles, alleging her roughly three-hour interview was cut to 16 minutes to support a “false and defamatory narrative.” In August Netflix moved to dismiss the suit. As of this update, I have found no ruling. My view: you can hold both truths at once. Her own body talk has been refreshingly sane; the show she ran was not always as kind to other people’s.
The hobby became a business, in Sydney
Here is where the “her own choice” argument wins outright. Banks did not diet the food story away; she built a company on it. Her ice cream brand, sold early on under the Smize Cream name, opened its SMiZE & DREAM flagship at Darling Harbour in Sydney in 2025, a two-storey round shop in front of Tumbalong Park. She has said she chose Australia for its dairy and that she came to love living there.
On June 24, 2025 she posted the moment her mother, Carolyn London, first saw the store. The name is half hers and half her mother’s: “SMiZE” for smiling with your eyes, “DREAM” for the woman who worked several jobs and took her daughter for ice cream to talk about the future. “For over a decade, I’ve been reimagining what an ice cream shop could be,” Banks told Inside Retail. “I can’t believe it’s real.” I have been to many celebrity product launches; very few come with a mother in tears and a handwritten note on the wall.
My take
In 2020 Banks said the weight would come off “one day, but not today,” and the internet spent two years trying to guess which day. She spent them opening an ice cream shop. Whatever her size is this October, it is not the interesting part of the story, and I suspect it never was. The bagel, on the other hand, I am still thinking about.
Sources
- Tyra Banks on Instagram, September 2026
- Harper’s BAZAAR, “Everything Supermodel Tyra Banks Eats in a Day | Food Diaries” (YouTube, April 2020)
- ET: Tyra Banks says she’s gained 25 pounds since 2019 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover
- NBC: Tyra Banks graces cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue 22 years after historic shoot
- AP via 6abc: Tyra Banks sues Netflix over ‘America’s Next Top Model’ documentary
- TheWrap: Netflix moves to dismiss Tyra Banks’ defamation lawsuit
- Inside Retail: Tyra Banks opens first SMiZE & DREAM ice cream store in Australia
- realcommercial.com.au: Why Tyra Banks opened SMiZE & DREAM in Australia
- TODAY: Tyra Banks on her mom’s reaction to her ice cream shop
