If you have not spent a great deal of time on the internet, you will probably know the British actress Jameela Jamil for her starring role in the popular comedy series The Good Place, or alternatively from her appearance in the Marvel miniseries She Hulk: Attorney at Law.
However, for the terminally online, Jamil is either a savior who is unafraid to say controversial things that her peers would shy away from, or someone whose batshit crazy utterances are given far too much attention given her modest celebrity status.
The latest of her pronouncements is on Brexit, ten years on, along with sundry instances of racism and horror in her home country. Jamil declared that “Britain is fucked. It doesn’t feel as though I’m going back to some haven. There’s literally a race war happening now.. Brexit paved the way for American chaos.”
For good measure, she also declared in the Yestergays podcast with Justin Sylvester,“I had to make [her Good Place] character Tahani more of a bitch. Americans think British people are so sweet, which is crazy because British people are truly the most evil people in history.”
Jamil went on to declare that Britain owed £43 trillion in reparations to India, as well as saying that “We colonized the world. Rich British people are not likable to anyone. They are horrible.”
Well, say what you mean, Jameela. It is not the first time that the actress has made some extraordinarily provocative comments, nor the first time that she has attracted a great deal of criticism for them. She ran into trouble in 2020 when she announced that she was going to serve as a judge on a US series about “voguing,” a dance trend born the Harlem gay community, despite being straight – she has been in a long-term relationship with the white British musician James Blake since 2015. And then she decided to announce on social media that she was in fact queer, saying “I added a rainbow to my name when I felt ready a few years ago, as it’s not easy within the South Asian community to be accepted, and I always answered honestly if ever straight-up asked about it on Twitter.”
Her supporters will once again defend these comments as being brave and principled, and coming from a place of deep integrity.
Jamil announced that she would no longer be giving any print interviews after the British journalist Liz Edwards questioned in the Sunday Times “the veracity of the astonishing catalog of incidents and illnesses she has talked about dealing with.” That included everything from rape and breast cancer to anorexia and not one but two bee-related health incidents.
Those who have not drunk the Kool-Aid when it comes to this divisive figure might wonder what on earth is driving Jamil to come out with these astonishing statements. Is it attention-seeking? A belief that everything that she says is true? Or simply a desire to provoke in a way that a lot of white men – especially right-wing white men – have been doing for years?
I am inclined, personally, to think that Jamil is anything but stupid or loud-mouthed, as her detractors have described her, with more than a touch of misogyny and racism in the process. Instead, she is someone who has long understood that in order to garner attention, you have to say things that will make even the disinterested sit up and pay heed. Every one of the comments on the podcast is outrageous, and seldom backed up with anything other than emotive arguments or the most spurious of facts.
But what she is doing is to make herself heard, all over again, and thus elevating herself from the position that her relatively modest career would afford her to being a Joan of Arc for the Instagram age, a heroine to those who agree with her political stances and a subject of vitriol to those who do not. You have to admire her successful dedication to riling people up, wherever you stand on such matters. But believing her? That’s quite another issue.
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