MasterChef Australia fans have floated the idea of enlisting US model and reality star Tyra Banks as a guest judge on the current season of the Aussie cooking competition.
The speculation emerged on the official MasterChef Australia subreddit during Tuesday’s episode, with one user saying Tyra, who recently launched an ice cream shop in Sydney, could join season 18 as “a guest judge for an ice cream challenge”.
“Tyra Banks has an ice cream shop in Darling Harbour …. the concept of Tyra Banks being a guest judge for an ice cream challenge,” the Reddit user wrote.
Dubbed SMiZE & DREAM, Tyra cut the ribbon on her Sydney ice cream store in July of last year, so the fan’s suggestion of having her as a MasterChef Australia guest judge wouldn’t totally stretch the realm of possibility.
The current season of MasterChef has already welcomed guest judges who aren’t immediately associated with kitchen wizardry — like Meghan Markle, Jimmy Barnes and Robert Irwin — so adding Tyra to that roster of cooking-adjacent celebs could be a savvy move on producers’ part.
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Tyra also has loads of experience in the reality TV game, having served as an executive producer and judge on the hugely popular competition series America’s Next Top Model, which is essentially MasterChef if the contestants served looks instead of dishes.
Despite all that, the idea of Tyra serving as MasterChef Australia guest judge — and indeed an actual ice cream challenge — has not been officially confirmed, and remains a pure fan theory at this point.
Plus, as one Redditor pointed out, Tyra might not be the best choice for judging food, given SMiZE & DREAM’s run-in with the NSW Food Authority earlier this year.
The food body investigated the shop over one of the menu items, advertised as ‘hot ice cream’, being labelled as ice cream despite Australia’s food standards stipulating the dessert must be frozen and meet strict requirements for milk fat and solids.
‘Hot ice cream’ is one of many, shall we say, unconventional recipes Tyra has shared with fans over the years, including the maple syrup bacon jerky dish she perfected while attending the Culinary Institute of America back in 2016.
She also went viral for a segment on the Tyra Banks Show in which she cooked vegetarian fried chicken that was essentially just toasted bread, which is the kind of dish that would have MasterChef contestants laughed out of the kitchen.
So while it’s fun to speculate, we wouldn’t hold our breath about Tyra making a guest judge appearance on MasterChef Australia anytime soon. She’s got an ice cream shop to run!
MasterChef Australia airs on Sundays at 7pm and Monday – Wednesday at 7:30pm on Channel 10 and 10Play.
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