As people rewatch the show in lockdown, America's Next Top Model has been courting a lot of controversy. Former host Tyra Banks has come under fire for an array of things during her tenure on the show: from asking contestants to change their ethnicities for shoots, mocking accents and tooth gaps and pretending to be ill and passing out to announce an acting challenge.
Now, Jay Manuel, who was creative director on the show for 18 cycles and nine years, has revealed the real reason he left the hugely-successful series, saying that he wasn’t fired from the show by Tyra - rather that he decided to leave. And that because he wasn’t contractually allowed to talk about why he left, his departure was ‘misreported to the press’.
'When we parted ways, I had already completed my contract after Cycle 18 with no plans to return for Cycle 19, and that’s something that people don’t know,’ he explained to Variety{
Jay - who is writing a novel inspired by his time on the show called The Wig, The Bitch & The Meltdown - also revealed his relationship with Tyra has been strained since leaving the show. ‘Over the past few years, we’ve emailed,’ he said. ‘To be very honest, we really have no relationship to speak of, which is really sad. Our time together on ANTM was amazingly productive and, at times, magical. We got to experience being part of a global phenomenon.'
Tyra recently addressed the criticism following the blackface challenge, acknowledging that the show had made some 'off choices' in a tweet earlier this week. And in the interview, Jay also said the challenge made him feel 'uncomfortable'. ‘It was very uncomfortable for me, in Cycle 4, it was a photoshoot where the girls had to swap races,’ he said. ‘I was so, so, so uncomfortable with this. I was never scripted for my intros or anything, and I didn’t know how I was going to be able to set this up — I was so afraid that I would wear this because I was the creative director, but it was not my idea.'
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