Jay Manuel Doesn’t Miss His Friendship With Tyra Banks

One of the more surprising revelations in Reality Check, the Netflix docuseries about America’s Next Top Model, is the deterioration of the friendship between Jay Manuel and Tyra Banks. After cycle eight of ANTM ended, Manuel told Banks he wanted to leave the show, and Banks allegedly refused to let it happen; Manuel worried about being blacklisted from the industry if he left despite Banks’s disapproval. The docuseries attempted to get Banks’s perspective on the friendship falling-out, but she simply said “nah” to the discussion, claiming she was going to give Manuel a “call.”

That hasn’t happened. “My phone number is the same. She knows it,” Manuel said while speaking with Entertainment Tonight after the docuseries aired. “I haven’t gotten a phone call, but I don’t think I will get that phone call, to be honest with you. And I’m not expecting it.” The last time Manuel spoke to Banks was in 2017, according to People. “If I never spoke to Tyra again in this lifetime, I’m okay with that,” Manuel added to Entertainment Tonight. When asked if he missed his friendship with Banks, he was blunt: “I don’t.”

Manuel wasn’t the only one from the Top Model team who was seemingly promised some closure from Banks. “She called me up three weeks ago and said she wanted to come visit. I said, ‘Sure, okay.’ But I haven’t seen her yet,” Miss J. Alexander told us in an interview this week. “I think she’ll wait for a ticket to be paid for.” Thankfully, the trio (Manuel, Alexander, and photographer Nigel Barker) have each other to talk through their Top Model fallouts.