Jameela Alia Jamil (born 25 February 1986) is a British actress, comedian, activist, and presenter. She began her career on Channel 4, where she hosted a pop culture series in the T4 programming block 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.
In 2016, Jameela Jamil moved to the United States. She is most well-known in the United States for her part in the NBC fantasy comedy series The Good Place, playing the character Tahani Al-Jamil.
She also hosted the TBS late-night game show The Misery Index, which aired from October 2019 through March 2021. She was also one of the judges of the voguing reality dance competition show about ball culture, Legendary, which ran from May 2020 until June 2022.
In 2022, Jamil worked on two superhero projects: the animated film DC League of Super-Pets and the live-action television series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Since 2022, she has voiced the character Asencia in the science fiction series Star Trek: Prodigy.
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Early life
Jameela Alia Jamil was born on 25 February 1986 to Ali and Shireen Jamil, at St Mary's Hospital, London England. She is of Pakistani descent on her mother's side and Indian descent on her father's side and has one brother.
Jamil grew up in several locations; she moved from Dulwich to Croydon before spending time in Spain and Pakistan, where each of her grandmothers lived. Upon returning to England, she lived in Camden, Belsize Park, and Swiss Cottage, as well as in Hampstead (as a teenager in a council flat).
As a child, the young Jamil faced numerous health problems, being born with congenital hearing loss and labyrinthitis. At the age of nine, she was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers–Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting the connective tissue in the body, and at 12 she was diagnosed with coeliac disease. 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.
As a teenager she suffered from anorexia nervosa, and describes never having a full meal between the ages of 14 and 17. She believes her eating disorder developed due to social pressure, including magazine articles selling weight loss products.
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. She credits the car accident for pushing her toward recovery from anorexia, saying it changed her relationship with her body. She said she won a scholarship to attend Queen's College School in London but was unable to complete her A-Levels, citing the accident.
She then taught English to foreign students at the Callan School of English in London for two years. In a 2013 interview with The Independent, she said she worked as a model scout. She also describes having worked as a photographer, scout and model agent for Premier Model Management.
Career
2009–2015: Early media career
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. 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. 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. 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. In 2010, Jamil presented The Closet, an online fashion advice show on the social networking site Bebo produced by Twenty Twenty.
Jamil also started working as an event DJ in 2010. 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. 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.
From 2011 to 2014, she wrote a column for the women's monthly magazine Company. In January 2012, Jamil replaced June Sarpong as host of the reality show Playing It Straight, 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. 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 Chart show.
2016–present: Transition into acting
Jamil left London in 2016 and moved to Los Angeles, with no plans to act, and instead intended to work as a screenwriter. 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. Having no acting experience at this point, she went for the audition and told the casting director that she had stage acting experience. She was later recalled for a second interview with Schur and the producers, in which she claimed to have comedy improv experience. She was eventually given the role.
In September 2016, the NBC fantasy comedy series The Good Place premiered, with Jamil as a regular cast member, playing Tahani Al-Jamil. Jamil's character became known for her tendency to name drop.
Jamil was on the cover of The Cut in February 2018; it was her first appearance on the cover of an American magazine. She provided her voice as a guest on the animated television series DuckTales. In the same year, Jamil hosted a recurring segment on Last Call with Carson Daly during its final season, "Wide Awake with Jameela Jamil".
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 on five songs on the album.
Since 2019, Jamil has been the host of The Misery Index, a comedy game show on TBS.
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.
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."
In April 2020, she debuted her podcast I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, which focuses on women's accomplishments, body positivity, activism and racial inclusivity. In October 2020, the podcast was nominated for an E! People's Choice Award. She was also the host of the first season of the SmartLess podcast Bad Dates.
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. In March 2018, Jamil created an Instagram account called I Weigh, 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. 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". 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. In part due to this work, Jamil was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women during 2018.
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. 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. 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 an 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". 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'." In 2019, she called out rapper Cupcakke on Twitter for posting about doing a water fast. Jamil often criticises Kim Kardashian for promoting unhealthy body ideals, such as by wearing a corset, promoting body makeup to cover skin imperfections such as psoriasis and offering maternity shapewear for her fashion line.
Charity
Jamil appeared on C4 Orange Rockcorps 2009, volunteering to help create a concert to fund local community projects. She has supported the Cultural Learning Alliance, which promotes access to culture for children and young people, and Vinspired National Awards for people aged 16–25 who have contributed to their communities through volunteering. Jamil designed her own version of SpongeBob SquarePants to be auctioned off with all the proceeds going to Childline. 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.
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.
On 2 August 2019, Jamil was awarded "Advocate of the Year" from the Ehlers–Danlos Society.
Jamil received the "Phenom" award from the 12th annual Shorty Awards on 3 May 2020.
Personal life
Jamil has been in a relationship with musician James Blake since 2015. 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.
Jamil has experienced anxiety, depression, and obsessive–compulsive disorder. On 10 October 2019, as part of World Mental Health Day, Jamil said she survived a suicide attempt six years earlier. In a 2020 episode of the talkshow Red Table Talk, she said she had also attempted suicide eight years earlier due to a major depressive episode. She said that she had EMDR therapy to treat her post-traumatic stress disorder before moving to Los Angeles.
In May 2024, Jamil said that her battle with an eating disorder had destroyed her bone density and damaged "my kidney, my liver, my digestive system, my heart".
