Jameela Alia Jamil[1] (born 25 February 1986)[2] is an English actress, activist and presenter. She began her career on Channel 4, where she hosted a pop culture series in the T4 strand from 2009 until 2012. She then became the radio host of The Official Chart, and co-hosted The Official Chart Update alongside Scott Mills on BBC Radio 1. She was the first regular solo female presenter of the BBC Radio 1 chart show.[3]
Jamil was born on 25 February 1986 in Hampstead, London, to Shireen and Ali Jamil.[7] She is of Pakistani descent on her mother's side and Indian descent on her father's side. In 2015, she revealed that, as a child, she faced numerous health problems, being born with congenital hearing loss and labyrinthitis, which she has had several operations to correct, and that she had 70% hearing ability in her left ear and 50% in her right ear.[8] At nine, she was diagnosed with hypermobileEhlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting the connective tissue in the body,[9][non-primary source needed][10] and at 12 with coeliac disease.[11] She experienced mercury poisoning at 21, which she attributes to mercury leakage from amalgam teeth fillings, exacerbated by their improper removal, which damaged her digestive system.[8][12]
As a teenager she suffered from anorexia nervosa, and describes not eating a full meal between the ages of 14 and 17. She believes her eating disorder developed due to societal pressure, including magazine articles selling weight loss products.[13] At age 17, she was struck by a car while running from a bee, breaking several bones and damaging her spine. She describes being told that she might never walk again, but slowly recovering after steroid treatment and physiotherapy, using a Zimmer frame to start walking.[14][15] She credits the car accident for pushing her toward recovery from anorexia, saying it changed her relationship with her body.[13] She attended Queen's College School in London but was unable to complete her A-Levels, citing the accident.[16] She has said she then taught English to foreign students at the Callan School of English in London for two years.[15][17] In a 2013 interview with The Independent, she said she worked as a model scout but never as a model;[16] however, in 2020, she said she worked as a model but denied being one in early interviews, saying she hid this because she was not successful at modelling.[18][19][20] She also describes having worked as a photographer,[17] scout and model agent for Premier Model Management.[14][21][22]
Jamil said in an NPR interview that she was working as a teacher when she was discovered by a producer at a bar and asked to audition as a presenter.[23] She also said she applied to be a presenter by email after seeing a T4 (youth slot of British free-to-air Channel 4) job advertisement.[24][25] Jamil appeared on Music Zone on E4, the digital / free to view entertainment channel owned by Channel Four, toward the end of 2008. She then began presenting at Channel 4's youth slot T4 in 2009.[26][27] In January 2009, when the previous presenter, Alexa Chung, left the morning TV show Freshly Squeezed, Jamil succeeded her as co-host, alongside Nick Grimshaw.[20][26][28][29] In 2010, Jamil presented The Closet, an online fashion advice show on the social networking site Bebo produced by Twenty Twenty.[27][28][30]
It's very exciting. I know it shouldn't be a big deal, but there's also a huge lack of ethnic minorities in showbiz. I'm completely Asian – not mix – and I'm so proud to be such a big part of Radio 1. I actually can't wait to get started now!
Jamil also started working as an event DJ in 2010.[32][33] She has said that her first show was at Elton John's birthday party, where she says she was invited to DJ because she lied about having prior experience.[34][35] In subsequent interviews and social media, she said she worked as a DJ for eight years, after studying music for six years on a music scholarship.[36][37]
From 2011 to 2014 she wrote a column for the women's monthly magazine Company.[27][38] In January 2012, Jamil replaced June Sarpong as host of the reality show Playing It Straight[broken anchor],[39] in which a group of gay men lie about their sexuality and compete with a group of straight men for a woman's affections to win money. In June 2012, Jamil collaborated with Very to debut her first fashion collection.[40] At the end of 2012, she became the radio host of The Official Chart and co-host of The Official Chart Update alongside Scott Mills on BBC Radio 1. Jamil made radio history, becoming the first sole female presenter of the BBC Radio 1 Chartshow.[41]
2016–present: Transition into acting
Jamil left London in 2016 and moved to Los Angeles.[42] She recounts having no plans to act, and that she instead intended to work as a screenwriter.[43] While working as a writer at 3 Arts, her agents told her that Michael Schur, who co-created Parks and Recreation, was looking for a British actress for an upcoming comedy series.[44] Having no acting experience at this point, she went for the audition and told the casting director that she had stage acting experience.[45] She was later recalled for a second interview with Schur and the producers, in which she claimed to have comedy improv experience.[46] She was eventually given the role.[47][48][49]
In September 2016, the NBC fantasy comedy series The Good Place premiered, with Jamil as a regular cast member, playing Tahani Al-Jamil.[4] Jamil's character became known for her tendency to name drop.[50]
Jamil made her first American magazine cover on the February 2018 issue of The Cut.[51] She provided her voice as a guest on the animated television series DuckTales.[52] In the same year, Jamil hosted a recurring segment on Last Call with Carson Daly during its final season, "Wide Awake with Jameela Jamil".[53]
Jamil's boyfriend, musician James Blake, said that she contributed to the production of his fourth album, Assume Form, in 2017–18; she is credited as an additional producer to five songs on the album.[54][55]
In 2018, Jamil joined the cast of Disney's Indian-inspired cartoon set in fictional Jalpur. Mira, Royal Detective debuted in March 2020, with Jamil playing Mira's Auntie Pushpa.[57]
In March 2020, she posed in a suit and tie for Playboy magazine's "On Speech" issue. She later tweeted, "From my Playboy shoot, I wanted to be shot like a man. No retouching, hi res, loose, comfortable clothes and completely unsexualized. I felt extremely free."[58]
In April 2020, she debuted her podcast I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, which focuses on women's accomplishments, body positivity, activism and racial inclusivity.[59] In October 2020, the podcast was nominated for an E! People's Choice Award.[60]
In 2021, Jamil contributed to the production of Blake's fifth album, Friends That Break Your Heart, adding additional production to its first single, "Say What You Will".[62]
Activism
Late in 2015, Jamil launched Why Not People?, an events and membership company dedicated to hosting live entertainment events accessible to people with disabilities.[63] In March 2018, Jamil created an Instagram account called I Weigh,[64] inspired by a picture that she came across online of Kourtney, Kim and Khloé Kardashian with their half-sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, detailing each woman's weight.[65] Jamil describes I Weigh as "a movement... for us to feel valuable and see how amazing we are, and look past the flesh on our bones".[64] The account welcomes submissions of followers' non-edited or airbrushed selfies using the hashtag #iweigh, with text describing the things that they feel grateful for or proud of.[66][65] In part due to this work, Jamil was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women during 2018.[67]
Jamil has been a critic of diet shakes and appetite suppressants. She explained that in her teens she starved herself, took laxatives and tips from celebrities on how to maintain a low weight. She has criticised the Kardashians, rapper Cardi B, and other influencers for promoting diet suppressants on social media.[68] Jamil created a petition on change.org titled "Stop celebrities promoting toxic diet products on social media", with a goal of reaching 150,000 signatures. She called upon social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to ban the practice, noting its dangerous effects on teenagers.[69] In September 2019, Instagram rolled out new global policy restrictions to help protect teen users.
There's little to no information about the side effects or main ingredients, the harm they may cause or any of the science behind how these products are supposed to work. They are instead, flogged in glossy paid adverts by celebrities and influencers with no expertise or authority in nutrition/medicine/biology.
Using social media, Jamil often criticises media industry standards and labels other female celebrities "double agents of the patriarchy" by promoting unhealthy body image, often invoking her own experience of having an eating disorder in her arguments. In 2013, she criticised Rihanna in her column for Company magazine, blaming her for maintaining a relationship with her abuser for fame, smoking marijuana, and posting "provocative images on Instagram to millions of hungry followers".[70] In 2014, she voiced her disapproval of Beyoncé sexualising her public image like Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea and criticised all these artists for "delud[ing] themselves into thinking it's 'feminism' if you get your fanny out on 'your terms'."[71][72] In 2019, she called out rapper Cupcakke on Twitter for posting about doing a water fast.[73] Jamil often criticises Kim Kardashian[74] for promoting unhealthy body ideals, such as by wearing a corset,[75] promoting body makeup to cover skin imperfections such as psoriasis[76] and offering maternity shapewear for her fashion line.[77]
In February 2020, she encountered criticism for taking a role as a host of the HBO voguing contest show Legendary, as she was not perceived as queer.[78] Afterwards she came out as queer in response. In August 2020, Jamil announced on Twitter that she was deleting tweets from 2009 to 2020 in order to make her account more activism-focused.[79] In November 2020, Jamil claimed that it was a third-party app that caused her Twitter posts to disappear in the previous months, and that she had deleted her entire Twitter post history to figure out why her posts were being removed.[80]
Jamil is against the airbrushing of editorial images and refuses to retouch all her photo shoots.[81]
I think it's a disgusting crime to Photoshop your images and put them out there in the world without announcing that's what you've done. It's a lie, you're lying to your fans, and your followers, and people who look up to you. You're an asshole. I really believe that. You're an asshole.
— Jameela Jamil, An excerpt from the 2018 Nylon magazine cover interview
She is also critical of fashion and modelling industry standards and remarked that runway models looked "long-starved" and "terrified".[82][83] Jamil frequently references Victoria's Secret models as a counterexample to her own identity.[84][48][81][85] She also called Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld a "ruthless, fat-phobic misogynist" after his death.[86]
Jamil also supports the climate change movement, expressing her admiration for Jane Fonda, Greta Thunberg and several other climate change activists.[87]
In 2023, Jamil signed an open letter expressing "serious concerns about editorial bias" in The New York Times's reporting on transgender people. The letter characterized the newspaper's reporting as using "an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language", and raised concerns about the Times's employment practices for trans contributors.[88][89][90]
Charity
Jamil appeared on C4 Orange Rockcorps 2009, volunteering to help create a concert to fund local community projects.[91] She has supported the Cultural Learning Alliance, which promotes access to culture for children and young people,[92] and Vinspired National Awards for people aged 16–25 who have contributed to their communities through volunteering.[93][94] Jamil designed her own version of SpongeBob SquarePants to be auctioned off with all the proceeds going to Childline.[95] She also said she would wear a chicken costume for the number of days equal to the number of thousands of pounds she raises for Comic Relief. She was sponsored approximately £16,000 and wore the costume for 16 consecutive days.[96]
Honours
Jamil was one of 15 women selected to appear on the cover of the September 2019 issue of British Vogue "Forces for Change", by guest editor Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.[97]
Jamil received the "Phenom" award from the 12th annual Shorty Awards on 3 May 2020.[98]
Personal life
Jamil has been in a relationship with musician James Blake since 2015.[99][100] She publicly declared herself as queer after her appointment as a judge of voguing reality series Legendary received heavy criticism, as voguing ball culture is rooted in Black and Latino LGBTQ communities in New York.[101][102][103][104]
In May 2024, Jamil said that her battle with an eating disorder has "destroyed" her bone density and damaged "my kidney, my liver, my digestive system, my heart".[112]
^ abMulloy, Katie; Bella Howard (photographer); Steve Morriss (stylist) (December 2009). "LIKE MY GOOD FRIEND JAMEELA TOLD ME AT THE CHATEAU MARMONT...". Nylon. New York: Nylon Holding Inc.
^ ab"Interview: Jameela Jamil", Look magazine, London, UK: IPC Group Limited, 16 February 2010
^ abAllen, Daniel (8 April 2013). "Jameela: The accident that triggered a new career". Archived from the original on 23 September 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2020. 'I was a freelance photographer, taking pictures of bands for 50 quid for their websites. And I was a freelance model scout.' For two years from the age of 20 she taught English as a foreign language.
^Yeates, Cydney (23 February 2020). "Jameela Jamil admits cruel taunts 'triggered her to point of near-death'". Metro. Retrieved 18 November 2020. The reason I always denied being a model in early interviews is because a) I never was successful. I just went to castings and did tiny jobs because I could never get my hips to 34 inches and there just wasn't successful South Asian models in the mainstream media when I was a teen.
^Boardman, Mickey (11 June 2019). "Fat and All That: Jameela Jamil Is Coming for Designers". PAPER. Archived from the original on 2 May 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2020. But I found it very difficult to infiltrate the industry from the outside, because I had been a teenage model who was encouraged to starve herself by her agency.
^Bonney, Nathalie (8 March 2013). "How to get work experience: Jameela Jamil advises". Good Housekeeping. Archived from the original on 23 September 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2020. Then I was a model scout for Premier, basically working free for a year, which led to me becoming a model agent.
^Allen, Daniel (8 April 2013). "Jameela: The accident that triggered a new career". The Times. In the meantime, T4, Channel 4's now-defunct youth brand, was looking for a new presenter. 'I took the e-mail address and sent them a picture of me in a fat suit dressed as Santa Claus.'
^Hess, Abigail (11 May 2019). "Jameela Jamil landed her role on 'The Good Place' with no acting experience—here's what she says about talent vs. tenacity". CNBC. Retrieved 18 November 2020. I also told the casting director that I had acting experience, which was a lie. I told her I'd been onstage, but I was talking about my school days," she says. When Schur asked if she had improv comedy experience, she fibbed once again. "I was like, 'I love Improv! Did loads of that on the theater in England!'
^Freeman, Hadley (28 July 2018). "Jameela Jamil: 'I won't become a double agent for the patriarchy'". The Guardian. ISSN0261-3077. Archived from the original on 17 September 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2020. She was also sexually assaulted by strangers twice. The first time happened when she was 12 and walking along Oxford Street when a man grabbed her by the crotch. "At 3.30 in the afternoon in front of John Lewis, for God's sake," she near shouts. When he wouldn't let go, she had to run down the street and throw herself against a wall to shake him off, then run away. When she was 15, she was dragged by a stranger into a car – "in Belsize Park! The most affluent part of London!" – and was saved only because a stranger saw her struggling.
^Ogunnaike, Nikki (31 January 2019). "Jameela Jamil Is Shutting Up and Making Space in 2019". Elle. Archived from the original on 22 August 2020. Retrieved 20 September 2020. I did EMDR therapy, which is a specific kind of therapy that removes the conditioning of irrational thought... It's very good for PTSD, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and OCD—all of which I had.
^Jamil, Jameela [@jameelajamil] (10 October 2019). "Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay" (Tweet). Retrieved 10 October 2019 – via Twitter. This month, 6 years ago, I tried to take my own life. I'm so lucky that I survived, and went on to use EMDR to treat my severe PTSD.
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