Miss J. Alexander's Health Update After 'Inside America's Next Top Model' Netflix Doc

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model looked closely into the making of the modeling competition. Tyra Banks was no longer in contact with the judges on the show, including Miss J. Alexander, who gave a master class on runway walking. The 67-year-old icon heartbreakingly talked about losing the ability to walk after having a stroke. Jay Manuel gave another health update.

Miss J. Alexander Can Get Out of His Wheelchair

Miss J. said in the documentary that he can’t walk…yet. “Well, J. is getting stronger every day,” Manuel told Entertainment Tonight. “He does physical therapy every day. He can get out of that chair. That’s what people don’t know. At the time of the documentary, he couldn’t, he can. He can take steps and look, if anyone is [going to] walk again, it’s Miss J.”

Photographer Nigel Barker also told the outlet that nothing is going to stop their good friend. “I remember visiting him in the actual hospital, and he couldn’t move,” Barker, 53. “He was completely paralyzed and lying there, and only half his face could move and one eye.” The photographer said Miss J. still managed to roll that one eye at his joke.

Miss J. gave scary details in the documentary about his stroke in December of 2022. “I spent five weeks in a coma, and I couldn’t walk, and I couldn’t talk,” he said. “And I thought to myself, what was I going to do?… I’m the person who taught models how to walk, and now I can’t walk.” He said Banks hadn’t visited him yet, but she texted him that she hoped to visit.

Banks ended the documentary by saying she lived in Australia. She also hoped to bring the show back for cycle 25 despite the shocking revelations of the original run. The last time the show aired was in 2018 with Ashley Graham, Law Roach, and Drew Elliott in the cast.