Background

Jameela Alia Jamil was born on February 25, 1986, in Hampstead, Essex, United Kingdom to the family of Ali Jamil and Shireen Quraishi, an Indian father and a Pakistani mother. She was born partially deaf and underwent several surgeries during her childhood. As a teenager, she had anorexia for several years. At 17, she was hit by a car. Her spinal column was injured, requiring her to spend a year in the hospital. She cites the car accident as what pushed her towards recovery, stating that it changed her relationship with her body and figuratively knocked some sense into her. She has an elder brother a writer Adnandus Dyzantae.

Education

Jameela Jamil studied at Queen's College, London. She was bullied in school due to her race and weight.

Career

After high school, for four years Jameela Jamil worked in a video shop and taught English to foreign students at Callan School of English in London for two years.

Jamil burst on to the broadcast scene in 2008 as co-host of Channel 4's Freshly Squeezed and T4. She went on to front shows such as Koko Pop and Playing It Straight as well as joining the BBC R1 presenting team.

Jamil also became a journalist for Cosmopolitan Magazine and the Huffington Post. After 2 years she became the face of Maybelline and Nails Inc. and in 2012, she released her own clothing line after much success in the fashion industry and having shot for both British and American Vogue, Glamour Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Japanese teen vogue.

In 2013 Jamil became the first female solo presenter of Radio 1's The Official Chart Show. 2012 also saw her nominated for the PPA and BSME awards for her writing. Later that year she was recruited by BBC Radio 1, to host her own show on their network, which would lead to a promotion in 2013, where she made history as the first woman in its 60 years on air, to host the Official Chart on the esteemed radio station. With much success, including several awards for radio and a growing DJ career she stayed on at the network until 2015 when she left to pursue a writing career in the United States.

In 2016 Jamil was cast by Mike Schur to portray the role of Tahani on NBC’s critically acclaimed The Good Place. The show has won both an AFI Award and a Critics Choice Award and is currently in its third season.

Achievements

• Jameela Jamil has managed to build a successful career as a radio presenter and actress. She achieved a certain level of recognition as a health problems awareness and fundraising activist for which she received the Patient Advocate of the Year Award from the Ehlers-Danlos Society in 2019.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • The Good Place: Season 3

    (The best comedy on television returns for Season 3! From ...)

    2018
  • The Good Place: Season 1

    (The show follows Eleanor Shellstrop, an ordinary woman wh...)

    2016
  • The Good Place: Season 4

    (The Good Place has reached the end of the forking road - ...)

    2019
  • The Good Place: Season 2

    (From executive producer Michael Schur ("Brooklyn Nine-Nin...)

    2017
  • How to Build a Girl

    (Beanie Feldstein stars in this irreverent comedy about Jo...)

    2019

• publication

  • Outspoken: 50 Speeches by Incredible Women

    (History didn’t listen to women, but that never stopped th...)

    2019

Religion

Jamil's parents were raised Muslim but didn't run a religious household. She in her turn said that she has no religion.

Politics

Jameela Jamil is politically liberal.

Views

Jamil is an advocate for many causes and in 2018 launched a movement and social media platform @i_Weigh which encourages women to feel valuable and look beyond the flesh on their bones. The movement has been recognized by both media outlets and the movement’s hundreds of thousands of followers over the world.

Jamil supports the Cultural Learning Alliance, which promotes access to culture for children and young people. She created her own version of SpongeBob SquarePants, for a Childline charity auction. Jamil also supports the climate change movement.

Personality

Jameela Jamil has announced she is "queer" after receiving criticism for being cast in a new LGBT-interest show.

Jamil had previously described her recovery from certain injuries in seemingly incongruous ways.

In a viral Instagram story highlight that was initially created last Wednesday, February 5, and updated as recently as Thursday, February 13, Tracie Egan Morrissey - writer, producer, and host of the podcast "Pot Psychology" - compared multiple interviews in which Jamil appears to make contradictory statements about her health and past.

In a 2015 interview with the Daily Mirror, Jamil described an incident in which she, at 17 years old, ran into oncoming traffic to avoid a bee and damaged her spine in the process. This injury, she explained at the time, confined her to bed for "two years" and forced her to walk with a Zimmer frame.

Four years later, in an interview with Cosmopolitan, Jamil offered a slightly different description of her recovery from this injury. Getting hit by a car, she said, "basically destroyed" her back and resulted in "about a year" recovery in bed, followed by "about six months" in a wheelchair.

In October 2019, Jamil told a similar, though certainly not identical, story to the Chicago Tribune, calling the incident her "worst moment," Jamil described getting hit by a car while fleeing a "swarm of bees" on an evening jog. In a panic, Jamil - who had just started filming the first season of "The Good Place" - ran into the street and was knocked down by a vehicle attempting to slow for her. Thankfully, she was unscathed and able to take shelter at a juice bar nearby. But as Morrissey and others have noted, this account bears a striking resemblance to that of Jamil's first accident. In fact, yet another story involving Jamil and nature's primary pollinator has since surfaced.

Jamil's 2014 breast cancer scare has also come under scrutiny. Per Jamil, the lump she found that year ultimately turned out to be "non-cancerous." But in a tweet dated October 7, 2019, Jamil claimed to have survived "cancer twice."

Even Jamil's prior career as a model was called into question. In tweets and interviews, Jamil has alternately stated that she was both a model and a model agent, as well as that she was never a model, but rather a model scout. Quotes Jamil has given about her eating disorder, however, seem to suggest that she did work briefly as a model between ages 15 and 17.

For Jamil, the skepticism surrounding her health is, at its core, a gendered and racialized issue. Many in the disability community have come to her defense in recent days, and indeed, there is a long and sordid history in this country of pathologizing women's bodies and minds. But online, there is a growing sense among fans and critics alike that Jamil may be playing up her struggles to attract attention, deflect criticism, and promote her personal brand as a social justice advocate and health advocate.

In 2020, because of apparent inconsistencies in her accounts of illnesses, allergies, assaults, accidents, and injuries, Jamil was accused of having Munchausen syndrome, wherein those affected feign disease, illness, or psychological trauma to draw attention, sympathy, or reassurance to themselves. She denied that she has the condition.

Physical Characteristics: Jameela Jamil is 5' 10½" or 1,79 meters in height.

Interests

• music

Connections

Jameela Jamil is in a romantic relationship with British singer-songwriter James Blake since 2015.

Father:

Ali Jamil

Mother:

Shireen Quraishi Jamil

Brother:

Adnandus Dyzantae

Partner:

James Blake

References

• Jameela Jamil Official Website