Miss J Alexander: ‘America’s Next Top Model’ star says stroke left him unable to walk

“I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t talk.”

Miss J Alexander, the flamboyant runway coach who helped define America’s Next Top Model, has revealed that a stroke left him in a coma for five weeks and unable to walk.

The 67-year-old television personality, born Alexander Jenkins, suffered the stroke on December 27, 2022. He opens up about the life-altering health crisis in Netflix’s new docuseries Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, which premiered on February 16.

“I woke up. I didn’t know where I was other than in the hospital,” he says in the series. “I couldn’t walk. And I couldn’t talk. And I thought to myself, what was I going to do?”

Alexander spent five weeks in a coma and more than a year in recovery. Although he has since regained his speech, he remains unable to walk as of February 2026.

The development carries a sharp irony for the man once known as the “Queen of the Catwalk”, whose career was built on teaching aspiring models how to command a runway.

“I’m the person who taught models how to walk,” he says. “And now I can’t walk. Not yet.”

Alexander was part of America’s Next Top Model from its very first cycle in 2003. Creator and host Tyra Banks invited him to join after he had coached her runway walk as a teenager. He quickly became a breakout personality, serving as the show’s main runway coach before later becoming a judge.

Alongside Jay Manuel and Nigel Barker, he helped shape the early identity of the modelling competition series.

“I taught a girl how to walk with confidence,” Alexander says in the documentary. “When that clicks, it’s like, ‘Oh my god, you’re really quite beautiful.’”

He appeared on every cycle until 19, when he, Manuel and Barker were let go in a major revamp in 2012. Reflecting on that moment in the Netflix series, Alexander recalls receiving birthday flowers from Banks shortly before being dismissed.

“And then I was fired five days later,” he says.

Despite his departure, he continued coaching on international versions of America’s Next Top Model and taught at the Savannah College of Art and Design for 15 years.

His career came to an abrupt halt with the stroke in 2022.

In the docuseries, Alexander becomes emotional describing his recovery.

“I cried,” he says. “I’m not ashamed to say that I cried.”

He also speaks about the support he received from former colleagues Manuel and Barker, who visited him in hospital. When asked whether Banks had visited him following the stroke, Alexander said she had not, though she had sent a message expressing her intention to do so.

The reunion with Manuel and Barker is captured in the final moments of Reality Check, as the trio embrace and reflect on their shared history.

Now focused on rehabilitation, Alexander remains determined.

“I can’t walk. Not yet,” he says. “I’m determined to walk. I’m sure you’re going to see me again. It’s not over for me yet.”