Key Points
Kelly Cutrone tells EW that Tyra Banks and Ken Mok called her immediately after Miss J. Alexander’s 2022 stroke.
The ex-ANTM judge says Banks and Mok, who were in California at the time, asked New York-based Cutrone to check on Miss J. in their absence.
Cutrone provides EW with screenshots of reported text correspondence with Mok from December 2022.
After longtime America’s Next Top Model star and runway diva extraordinaire Miss J. Alexander said earlier this year that ANTM head judge and host Tyra Banks didn’t visit him in the hospital after a December 2022 stroke left him paralyzed, fellow show alum and powerhouse publicist Kelly Cutrone is hitting back at negative characterizations of Banks in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly.
Cutrone, who served on the ANTM panel for cycles 18-22, tells EW that Banks and producer Ken Mok immediately asked her to check on Miss J. shortly after hearing that he’d suffered a medical emergency in New York, all while Banks and Mok were on the West Coast.
“They were worried,” Cutrone recalls, providing EW with screenshots of a text she says is from Mok, dated Dec. 30, 2022 — three days after Miss J.’s Dec. 27, 2022 stroke.
“Hey Kelly…. Did you hear about Jay Alexander?” a person saved in Cutrone’s phone as “Ken” texted her at the time, per screenshots Cutrone sent to EW. Roughly three hours later, the text shows Cutrone responding that she had “someone going to [Miss J.’s] apartment” — a person Cutrone identifies to EW on the phone as a mutual friend named Arton.
Miss J. Alexander on ‘ANTM’; Miss J. in Netflix’s ‘Reality Check’ docuseries
Credit: Eric Liebowitz/The CW; Courtesy of Netflix
“Arton went to his apartment” at “the behest of Tyra and Ken being worried,” Cutrone explains to EW, later providing more screenshots, she says are from Arton, which claim that Miss J. was admitted to the hospital under an alias. Cutrone says that made it difficult for anyone to visit him in the immediate aftermath of the stroke.
“Getting info on his alias and how to visit him, in case you wanted to,” Arton wrote to Cutrone in the text, dated Jan. 9, 2023, roughly two weeks after Miss J.’s reported stroke left him on “life support,” per Arton’s message. (Miss J. eventually returned to the red carpet in a wheelchair in April 2026.)
Cutrone alleges to EW that Miss J.’s niece “put him in a hospital under another name, so we had no way at that point to see him and get information about him,” which, she says, explains why Banks didn’t visit him in the hospital at the time. “It was difficult for Tyra and Ken to find him in the hospital,” Cutrone says, alleging that Miss J.’s niece “didn’t want anybody to visit him” at the time.
In Netflix’s Reality Check docuseries, which debuted in February on the streaming platform, Miss J., who was let go from the show alongside staples Jay Manuel and Nigel Barker after cycle 18, publicly revealed news of his stroke for the first time.
“I had a stroke. I woke up, I didn’t know where I was, other than the hospital,” Miss J. said in the docuseries. “I spent five weeks in a coma, and I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t talk. I thought to myself, what was I going to do? I couldn’t walk, I could’t speak. It was emotional, I cried. I’m not ashamed to say that. I cried, and then once I was in the hospital, Jay [Manuel] and Nigel [Barker] came to visit.”
When asked by a docuseries interviewer if Banks visited him, Miss J. replied, “No, not yet. She just sent me a text that she wants to come and visit me. But, no, not yet.”
Cutrone adds, “I’m not saying Miss J. doesn’t have the right to be like, this was too little, too late. That’s his world, but all I can say as the person [Mok and Banks] reached out to, they were highly concerned,” and that, “they were far away in California, and I was closest on the ground to them. That’s why I reached out to Arton.”
Earlier this year, a member of Banks’ team did not respond to EW’s multiple requests for comment on claims made in the docuseries. EW has reached out to representatives for Banks, Miss J., and Netflix for additional comment. EW also contacted Mok and Arton directly for a response but did not immediately hear back.
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Netflix’s Reality Check docuseries included numerous allegations against Banks and the show, ranging from instances of sexual assault on set to Manuel alleging that Banks didn’t speak to him on set after he reportedly expressed interest in leaving the show as its creative director around cycle 8.
“I just think that whole thing was disgusting. That chick f—ing fed you, took care of you, raised you, and this is how you say thank you? F— off!” Cutrone said of Manuel’s criticism in a recent Chris vs. the World podcast interview.
Watch Miss J. discuss his stroke in the video above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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