Jay Manuel says ‘skewed editing’ made him want to leave America’s Next Top Model
The 53-year-old worked on the show for nine years.
Canadian host Jay Manuel has revealed he wanted to leave America’s Next Top Model after seeing its “skewed editing” and being “forced” to participate in controversial photoshoots.
The 53-year-old spent nine years as a judge and creative director on the American reality TV series, in which aspiring models competed for the chance to begin their career in the modelling industry.
America’s Next Top Model, hosted by US model Tyra Banks, faced criticism for its allegedly harsh treatment of contestants and its outlandish stunt shoots and compulsory cosmetic transformations.
Speaking to the Press Association, Manuel opened up about the “turning point” when he realised he wanted to leave the popular TV show.
He said: “I started noticing how this show was being edited. I don’t just mean the girls, I noticed myself. I noticed how the edits were starting to skew.
“You see a 16-hour photo shoot in six minutes on TV, and I look like I’m loving one girl, pushing another girl, eye rolling – all this stuff. And I’m like, ‘Whoa, that’s not me’.”
Manuel added: “Early on, I started having conversations with one of the head editors like, ‘look, I’m starting to come off a certain way, and I need to make sure that the integrity of who I am comes forward’.”
He said one of the show’s photoshoots, which saw the contestants tasked with dressing up as a race different from their own, made him feel “uncomfortable” and he asked to be written out of the episode.
Manuel said: “My parents grew up in South Africa. They grew up under apartheid. There is no way I could see myself – thinking of my extended family seeing this, who still live in South Africa with those kind of scars and wounds and emotional trauma – seeing me as a person of colour saying we’re going to switch races.”
He told PA that the photoshoot was the moment he “started losing control of creative on the show”, and added: “I was literally between a rock and a hard place, and I was forced to do my job in that moment.”
Manuel said: “I knew I had to start finding this place of comfort and the right opportunity to exit.
“But you don’t walk away from a network like that, they make it very difficult for you.”
Manuel told PA he emailed the show’s creator, Banks, after the show’s eighth season and said he wished to resign.
He said: “Three days later, I get an email back from her and I remember my heart going in my throat.
“I opened the email, and it was just three words. It just said, ‘I am disappointed’.
“From that moment onwards, communication was completely cut off. That entire (next) season, she would only speak with me when the cameras were rolling.”
Manuel said he was axed from the show in 2013 after almost a decade, after a network switch-up which left him “feeling betrayed”.
In 2020, he released a fictional, satirical book based on his experiences on the controversial reality TV show.
On Monday, Netflix released a documentary titled Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model in which judges, producers and previous contestants revisit the show eight years after it ended.
Manuel said seeing old clips of the reality series “pretty strange”, adding: “It was really strange, absorbing it.
“Seeing the clips in this documentary didn’t feel so foreign, but what was powerful for me was hearing these contestants’ voices.”
Speaking about the tell-all documentary, he added: “I’m really glad that we did it. I’m glad the story is being shared. These women’s voices in this documentary are just so powerful.”
