Tyra Banks lost her home in the Palisades fire — but she still hasn’t seen the damage.
Eleven months after the California wildfires devastated thousands of homes, the 52-year-old former host of “America’s Next Top Model” is grappling with the loss, and can’t bring herself to return back to where her $7 million mansiononce stood.
“I still haven’t seen the site of my home. In my mind it’s still there,” the American supermodel, who now lives in Sydney, Australia, told Page Six.
“When I first was in LA, a month or so after, I wanted to [visit] but I couldn’t because it was so blocked off. I was not even allowed to go even being a resident,” she said. “I feel weird. I just kind of hold it in my head.”
Banks and her partner, businessman Louis Bélanger-Martin, moved Down Under in 2023 with Bank’s 9-year-old son, York, from her previous relationship with Norwegian photographer Erik Asla. They were in Sydney during the wildfires.
“We were in Australia at a friend’s party. It was very strange. We had a cry,” Banks recalled of the heartbreaking moment she learned her Palisades mansion was lost.
Now, though, she’s been into the holiday spirit with her newly released song, “Santa SMiZE, Santa SMiZE.”
“I love this song. I know it’s mine, I know I wrote it — but I’m like, you know what? This is good!’” Banks said of the poppy Christmas track, released Thursday on Spotifyand Apple Music.
She even hopes it the staying power of Mariah Carey’s“All I Want For Christmas Is You.”
“We will never dethrone the queen of Christmas,” Banks told Page Six of Carey, 56, who rakes $2.5 million annually from her 1994 song, according to The Economist. “She is the queen. ‘Santa Smize’ is the princess.”
The title is a play on the “smile with your eyes” advice she gave contestants on “America’s Next Top Model,” the show she created and hosted from 2003 to 2015.
Recently, the show has become a flash point on social media, where Gen Z, watching it for the first time,is critical of moments like a challenge from Season 13 in which contestants had their skin darkened for a “biracial-themed” photo shoot.
Some people, looking back, have also accused Banks, who was an executive producer on the series, of bullying models— like Season 6 winner Dani Evans, who she told would never made it as a model because of the gap in her teeth — and other judges of fat shaming.
“I think what happens is, and this is just honest, people look at things from the past with the lens of 2025 … and they don’t understand that a lot of things had to happen to get us where we are today,” Banks told Page Six.
“Certain doors had to be open or certain things had to be fought or even certain mistakes were made … That they just don’t see. I think there’s the challenge of social media.”
Still, Banks says she still gets stopped on the street by fans with one specific question.
“When I had ‘Top Model,’ I used to get waiters or waitresses runway walking for me — almost like auditioning,” she said. “I don’t get so much of that anymore, but I do get, ‘Oh my god, how’s my smize?!’
In June, Banks opened an ice cream shop,Smize & Dream, in Sydney — a sweet tribute to her mom, who would take her to Häagen-Dazs in Hollywood when she was an up-and-coming model.
Banks found a way to make hot ice cream — a custard-like hot milkshake that went viral on TikTok in October, leaving fans puzzled by the science behind it.
The star is bringing the recipe to ARTECHOUSE inside Manhattan’s Chelsea Market on Dec. 10, when she will also premiere her music video for “Santa SMiZE, Santa SMize,” before heading to SantaCon on Dec. 13 for a live performance at Mr. Purple on the Lower East Side.
The post Tyra Banks wants to be the ‘princess of Christmas’ — and still hasn’t visited home site lost in LA fire: ‘In my mind it’s still there’ appeared first on Page Six.
