close
Thursday April 25, 2024

Jay Manuel claims his relationship with Tyra Banks never ‘recovered’ following the ‘Top Model’ incident

Jay Manuel recently claimed that his professional rift with Tyra Banks never completely ‘recovered’ to this day

By Web Desk
August 07, 2020
Jay Manuel claims his relationship with Tyra Banks never ‘recovered’ following the ‘Top Model’ incident

Jay Manuel’s time on America's Next Top Model was reportedly filled with a notorious amount of fear. Reportedly his professional relationship never fully ‘recovered’ with Tyra Banks, even after he left the show.

Recently all that came to pass during an episode of Just the Sip, Manuel touched upon his professional relationship with Tyra.

Manuel claimed that even though he had the title of creative director on the show, no creative decisions were run by him. One such incident highlighted his lack of control on set and it was during Cycle 4 when Manuel claimed that he was extremely uncomfortable over Tyra asking him to judge a segment where the actresses swapped races.

Even when Manuel told Tyra, "I can't do this shoot” he was shrugged off and told I had to do that shoot and show up.” Not only that, “they said, 'don’t worry we'll cover you in the edit. We'll make sure you're not, kind of, dragged for it.'"

Even though he was extremely uncomfortable about shooting the segment, he had to stay on because he had "a network contract for several cycles” in a place that promoted a culture of fear.

Manuel went on to say, "On Top Model, there was a bit of this fear culture, so I kind of had to go along with it."

"I was free and clear to do whatever I wanted to do. And they wanted to renegotiate for more cycles, and I reached out to Tyra first because she always asked me to speak with her first. And I said, 'Unfortunately, I can't come back to the show…I feel like I've given all I can to the show and I'm going to work on other things.'"

Since Tyra was first and foremost a businesswoman, Manuel thought "thought for sure she'd understand" his decision, but it did not end up being the case, unfortunately.

"She just had two words for me, 'I'm disappointed.' And that was it, that was the end of the discussion."