Jay Manuel Was Not Comfortable With Infamous Race-Swapping Photoshoot on ‘America’s Next Top Model’: ‘How Can We Put Someone in Blackface?’
Jay Manuel had big reservations about a notorious moment on America’s Next Top Model.
The UPN competition series was no stranger to controversy over the years, with plenty of people calling out relentless body shaming, cruel comments during judging (especially those from “world’s first supermodel” Janice Dickinson), and a sexual assault that was captured on camera (and passed off at the time as a “cheating scandal.”)
And then their were the weird photoshoots, which were often bizarre and occasionally crossed the line into offensive. That was certainly the case for a season 4 shoot, which called on contestants to pretend to be someone of a different race.
Jay Manuel says race-swapping ‘ANTM’ shoot was ‘most difficult’
“We’re actually going to switch your ethnicities,” Manuel informed the would-be supermodels in the episode, which aired in 2005. The women were then made up to appear to be “East Indian,” “African American,” and “traditionally African.”
“The challenge here really is taking on the persona of that other ethnicity while in the photograph, and owning it,” he goes on to explain.
While the show’s creative director appears to be on board with the shoot’s concept in the episode, in reality he was cringing.
“The shoot that I had the most difficult time with was this race-swapping shoot. My parents are from South Africa. They grew up during apartheid. I am very aware of that history,” Manuel says in Netflix’s new docuseries, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.
Tyra Banks didn’t understand why ‘America’s Next Top Model’ photoshoot was controversial
Manuel was so distressed by the proposed shoot that he tried to back out of filming.
“I remember my heart dropping out. I was like, “There’s no way I can do this.” … I remember calling my mom and saying, “I don’t want to do this shoot. How can we put someone in blackface?” he said in a conversation with Interview magazine.
“Tyra told me she was doing it from a place of empowerment,” he continued, adding that “they would not allow it” when he asked to be excused from participating.
Banks, who is also interviewed in the Netflix doc, admits that she didn’t understand at the time why people had an issue with the photoshoot.
“I was in my own little bubble, in my own little head, that this was my way of showing the world that brown and Black is beautiful,” she says. “But then we put it out there, and the world was like, ‘Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind?'”
“Looking at the show now, through the 2020 lens, it’s an issue,” she added. “And I understand 100% why.”
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is streaming on Netflix.
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