Netflix's newReality Check: Inside America's Next Top Modelis not just revisiting its runway challenges and iconic meltdowns. It is also reopening conversations which fans had no idea about.
In its final episode,Miss J Alexander, the flamboyant runway coach who became one of ANTM's most beloved fixtures, reveals he suffered a severe stroke on 27 December 2022 and guess who never got in touch with him since?
Alexander shared that the stroke left him paralysed from the waist down, spent five weeks in a coma and was hospitalised for more than a year and a half, but the creator and star host of the show, Tyra Banks, never showed up.
'I taught models how to walk,' Miss J says in the episode. 'And now I can't walk.' However, he added that he is 'determined to walk.'
During the same episode, a producer asks whether Tyra Banks has visited him since the stroke. 'No, not yet,' Miss J replies. He adds that she sent a text saying she wanted to come see him, 'but no. Not yet.'
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Jay Manuel and Nigel Barker, his former co-judges onAmerica's Next Top Model, are shown visiting him in an emotional reunion, taking selfies with him. However, Banks is not part of that scene.
It's a brief reveal, but given the growing scrutiny around Banks, the moment became one of the docuseries' biggest highlights.
Within hours of the documentary's 16 February premiere, clips of Miss J's admission were circulating across social media. Fans have called the moment 'heartbreaking' and 'hard to watch' as they reacted to the revelation.
Several pointed out that Miss J and Banks go back decades, as he famously coached her runway walk when she was just 16. For many fans, that history made the revelation sting more.
Source: International Business Times UK
