Key Points
The Hills star, Bravo personality, and ANTM judge Kelly Cutrone has come to Tyra Banks’ defense.
Cutrone ripped into Jay Manuel after the makeup artist criticized Banks in Netflix’s ANTM doc.
“Nobody knows who you are, nobody cares about you,” Cutrone said of Manuel.
Former America’s Next Top Model judge, The Hills personality, and powerhouse fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone has ripped into ex-ANTM star Jay Manuel over what she called “disgusting” treatment of host Tyra Banks amid continued fallout from Netflix’s bombshell exposé documentary.
Manuel, who served as Top Model’s creative director and frequent panelist from cycles 1-18 until he was fired alongside fellow longtime ANTM personalities Nigel Barker and Miss J. Alexander, spoke out at length earlier this year against Banks and the modeling competition series in Netflix’s three-part Reality Check docuseries.
“She got done dirty on that f—ing documentary,” Cutrone said in a new interview on the Chris vs. the People podcast (below), maintaining that she loves Banks and ANTM producer Ken Mok — both of whom receive sustained criticism from former panelists, contestants, and cultural critics in the doc.
“Could she have worn a better silhouette? Yes, but there were a lot of tricks that the people that made that show pulled on her,” Cutrone alleged in her interview, after she sat on the Top Model panel from cycles 18-22, with cycle 18 crossing over with the tenures of Manuel, Barker, and Alexander.
Cutrone said the show “ran like a f—ing slick ship” and that she “didn’t see anything crazy” despite numerous complaints to the contrary from others involved in the show.
“They asked me to be on that documentary a million times. I was like, no f—ing way,” Cutrone maintained. “I already knew, like, what the f— am I doing here? Going on this thing for free because I’m trying to sell a book like Jay Manuel? Please, dude, you were a f—ing makeup artist at a MAC counter in Toronto. [Banks] smiled on you and waved her wand. How do you repay her? You write a fictionalized book where you make yourself look like Karl Lagerfeld.”
Cutrone then showed the podcast host a photo of the cover of Manuel’s 2020 novel The Wig, The Bitch & The Meltdown, which tells the unflattering story of a ruthless reality show host, Keisha Kash — whom many speculated was inspired by Banks.
“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 continued on the book and Manuel’s sustained criticism of Banks, which included his suggestions in the docuseries that Banks might’ve had something more to do with his firing than she let on at the time, and that she didn’t speak to him in a significant capacity after he said he expressed to her that he wanted to leave the show to explore other opportunities. (A member of Banks’ team did not respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s repeated requests for comment at the time of the docuseries’ release.)
Cutrone finished her remarks about Manuel by stressing that “nobody knows who you are, nobody cares about you, the only thing that people speak about you is when you talk about Top Model,” and said she felt that Manuel “got so ass-chafed about” his firing that he wrote his novel in retaliation, in her estimation.
EW has reached out to Netflix for comment. EW has additionally attempted to reach Manuel for a response to Cutrone’s remarks.
Tyra Banks on the ‘America’s Next Top Model’ judging panel
Credit: CBS
Amid a wealth of other criticisms highlighted in the Netflix docuseries, Manuel also claimed that the show manipulated judging results in favor of contestants who had more interesting stories that producers felt would resonate with a reality TV audience.
“Initially, they were really trying to pull the best shots. But, as we were getting into the story, it turned into, we need a better story out of these shots. So sometimes, and I had no control over this, I lost my control,” Manuel alleged in the docuseries. “When a girl was eliminated, another shot was selected. Sometimes, not always, it was not her best shot. There was a better shot.”
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Speaking on eliminations, producer Ken Mok said in the documentary that “there was always so much more at stake emotionally in Top Model than you have in a typical reality competition, which is just a game,” while Barker added, “Did we always get it right? I don’t think so, no. I think sometimes we eliminated the wrong person, but that’s the way it goes.”
Watch Cutrone discuss Top Model in the podcast clip above.
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