Three former America’s Next Top Model judges are speaking out following the release of Netflix’s docuseries about the show.
Source: Gilbert Carrasquillo / Getty
Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, and Miss J Alexander, appear in the doc, titled, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. This week, the three judges appeared together on Sherri, talking to host Sherri Shepherd their first sit-down interview as a trio since the doc premiered on Monday.
The documentary lets fans in on Tyra Banks’ estrangement from the judges, who were all once close with the supermodel and ANTM creator. For Manuel, their relationship changed after he tried to leave the show in 2007, which led her to respond with an email that read: “I am disappointed.”
After that, their communication off-camera halted and Manuel told Shepherd that Banks completely shut him out, even though he ended up staying on the show until after cycle 18 in 2012, when Barker and Alexander were also let go.
“That was a very strained relationship because she wouldn’t talk to me when the cameras weren’t rolling, and still, to this day, that really hurts,” he said.
When asked about their relationship in the documentary, Banks refused to talk about their fall out, only saying she should give him a call. Manuel says Tyra has yet to reach out, and he’s not waiting by the phone. Since Banks teased a cycle 25 of America’s Next Top Model at the end of the doc, Shepherd asked the trio if they’d return, to which Manuel responded, “If we’re going to be real… I don’t think I’m getting that phone call.”
Manuel also claimed that the woman in the doc wasn’t the real-world Tyra, saying: “We see prepared television Tyra. I know the real woman. I know her struggles. I know what she has fought in this industry.”
As for Miss J Alexander, the former ANTM judge revealed that Banks has still not visited him since he had a stroke in 2022, though she did “reach out.”
Alexander shared that Angela Bassett, Alfre Woodard, George Lopez, and more stars have paid him visits as he continues his recovery journey, but “Ty didn’t,” he said while staring into the camera. He added that she “she did reach out when it first happened” and had told him she was “in LA,” but never came to see him.
When Shepherd asked Alexander if Banks’ absence made him “feel some type of way,” he responded, “Yes.”
Former judge Nigel Barker jumped in to say that in spite of Banks living “all over the world,” that “If you have a friend or someone you care about, you just go the extra mile, don’t you?”
Barker still didn’t seem to have as many negative feelings about Banks as his fellow judges.
When speaking on his time on the show and his current relationship with Tyra–or lack thereof–he said: “Some things are best left just as they were… Millions upon millions upon hundreds of millions thoroughly enjoyed watching ‘America’s Next Top Model’ … Take the good, the bad, the ugly, remember the positive things. Be kind out there to all people,” he said.’
Hit the flip to see what Sherri had to say about all the backlash Tyra’s getting…
In a separate segment on the show, without the judges on the couch, Sherri Shepherd talked about the docuseries herself, reviewing some of the controversies that were revisited in the doc. While talking about Tyra’s indiscretions and all of the backlash she’s gotten, Shepherd got emotional, relating to the lengths a Black woman has to go to in order to keep a show on the air.
“People don’t understand, when we are in power, the battles that we had to fight, that you will never know about. Never! To keep a show on the air. There are things that we have to do, that people will tell us, ‘If you wanna stay on the air, this is what you gotta do.’”
She continued, choking up, “And we gotta weigh the options, and sometimes we make bad decisions, and we look up, and we go, ‘In hindsight, maybe I should not have done it, but I just wanna open the door and give. a platform to people who look like me.”
