The history of television is littered with reality stars who have been unhappy with their edit. Most of these individuals don’t sue, but one Amazing Race couple is getting litigious. The news is coming months, however, after one ½ of the TAR duo admitted to "inexcusable" behavior on the show. Here’s what happened, and what’s going on with the new lawsuit.
Fans Were Not Happy With Jonathan Towns’ Behavior During Season 37
Season 37 of The Amazing Race aired back in 2024. Most of the talk that season had to do with the addition of the Fork in the Road twist; however, the episodes also spotlighted one of the most notorious Race teams so far: Jonathan and Ana Towns.
Over the course of the season, Jonathan appeared to belittle Ana and her abilities more than once. He was not kind to her when she struggled in challenges, and she typically took his criticism quietly, from what the reality series showed us. I remember at one point Ana appeared to defend herself by saying, “You’re treating me like I did something wrong,” leading Jonathan to call her “rude.”
At one point during a confessional, Ana admitted she and Jonathan had broken up at one point before their TV appearance, but Jonathan was still putting in effort with the family. They ended up bonding over TAR episodes, and ultimately made it onto the reality competition series. They didn’t win the million dollars, but later said that watching the episodes back led Jonathan to an autism diagnosis and self-reflection.
In fact, in May of 2025, the Towns family said in a YouTube video “you only see certain things” during the course of the show and that “unfortunately” for them what audiences saw was “the very worst.” Jonathan said he’s learned a lot about autism and childhood trauma following his TV appearance, but they got help afterward for what Ana referred to in the same video as “childlike tantrums.” He called the behavior "inexcusable," also stating:
I am, at the end of the day, 100% responsible for how I direct my anger and who I direct it on. In this case, I directed my anger onto my wife. That should never, ever have happened. That’s on me, 100%. It’s hard looking back at this knowing what I know now. It’s unfortunate that we went on the show not knowing what we know.
Ana Towns also told Parade in 2024 that rewatching the series had been hard, telling the outlet:
I mean, we’re doing OK. Talking about some of the things that we’ve seen on the show, it is hard to look back on some of the things that we’ve seen. And essentially relive them. But it’s, at the same time, kind of a reminder of how far we’ve come since then. And so it’s always kind of bittersweet, when you look back at the race. But yeah, at this point, we’re kind of moving forward in this new kind of knowledge that we have.
It seemed the story would end there, until this week, when an $8 million lawsuit was reportedly dropped.
CBS And More Are Now Being Sued For Defamation
Per reports, Disney, ABC, Jerry Bruckheimer’s production company, Paramount and CBS are being sued by Towns over defamation. The Amazing Race is a cross-production coming from CBS Studios and Twentieth Century TV, which are now owned by Paramount and Disney, complicating the number of companies involved. It’s also worth noting TAR actually airs on CBS, oftentimes in the same 90-minute block format as Survivor.
Via Deadline, the lawsuit claims production put on a smear campaign against the couple, calling it a:
Smear strategy so audacious and immoral that would shock the conscience of even the most cynical propagandist.
The focus of the suit seems to be on Jonathan and not Ana, who was given a relatively benign edit, despite the stressors placed on the couple. Their struggles ultimately led them to place third during Season 37 of The Amazing Race. The suit claims Towns was not shown “accurately and completely” and that a “constructed, false and highly damaging portrayal” was shown, instead.
The resulting broadcast, disseminated to tens of millions of viewers on a nationally distributed television network, falsely portrayed Jonathan Towns, a private individual with no antecedent public profile, as a morally depraved, brutal and abusive spouse.
Per reports, the couple would also like the entire series re-edited to indicate a knowledge and awareness of the autism diagnosis Jonathan Towns reportedly had not known about prior to appearing on television.
Towns previously also told Parade that he’d hoped to “be liked” after his appearance on TAR, but that it became clear very early on he was being portrayed as a villain. He said Reddit and other places online helped to clarify people’s opinions immensely, noting the entire experience “mortified” him.
