Failure Throwback: Jameela Jamil

Jameela Jamil is an actor, activist, and founder of the I Weigh movement. From teaching English to starring in The Good Place, Jameela shares the highs, lows, and radical honesty that define her journey. This episode first went out in February 2021. We talk about: Her struggle to be a "good" celebrity Body image battles and self-kindness Financial missteps and learning to thrive Calling out media hypocrisy and sparking global change Packed with truth bombs and bold insight, this episode is for anyone navigating life, self-worth, and the pressure to fit in. ✨ IN THIS EPISODE: 02:35 Challenges and Criticisms 03:35 Embracing Failure and Progress 08:47 Navigating Public Criticism 15:14 The Pressure of Being a Female Celebrity 26:57 Mental Health 30:09 Empathy and Self-Reflection 30:25 Struggles with Body Image 31:21 The Impact of Diet Culture 32:26 Realisations and Recovery 36:55 Navigating Compliments and Criticisms 42:25 Financial Failures and Lessons 47:59 Life in Los Angeles 52:02 Future Plans and Activism 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: “I failed at being the kind of woman the media wanted me to be—and thank God for that.” “I spent years trying to be kind to my body. Now I’m trying to be kind to myself.” “If you’re not being criticised, you’re probably not saying anything worth hearing.” 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Elizabeth’s upcoming one-off show at Cadogan Hall on 21 Sep for her new novel One of Us: ⁠https://www.fane.co.uk/elizabeth-day Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 📚 WANT MORE? Phoebe Waller-Bridge – The Fleabag creator opens up about creative failure, imposter syndrome, and the messy beauty of storytelling: https://link.chtbl.com/Xr_yQtIZ Dolly Alderton – Journalist and author who dives into romantic missteps, self-worth, and the chaos of growing up: https://link.chtbl.com/5pFApeKP 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:10Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome to How To Fail, the podcast that discusses all the things that didn't go to plan and why that might not be such a bad thing. Today, I'm inviting you to re-listen or to meet for the first time this episode that I originally released in July 2021. It's with Jamil Jamil and it covers everything from Jamil's failure to be kind to her body, her failure to be a "good female celebrity" and a failure to manage her finances. It's a conversation that I know has stayed with many of you ever since we first recorded it. Whether you're hearing it for the first time or revisiting it, I hope that you enjoy this episode as much as I do.

• 0:58Elizabeth Day?

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• 1:41Elizabeth Day?

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• 2:30Elizabeth Day?

  Jamila Jamil describes herself on her Instagram bio as "a feminist in progress", but it has to be said that at the tender age of 34, her achievements are already so notable that the progress part seems to be going pretty well. Born and raised in North London, Jamil was at first an English teacher before a chance encounter with a TV producer in a pub led to a stint as a presenter on Channel 4's youth strand T4. She went on to become the first solo female host of Radio 1's chart show. A 2016 breast cancer scare precipitated a move to Los Angeles, where she landed a role as the narcissistic socialite Tahani in the hit sitcom The Good Place.

• 3:12Elizabeth Day?

  For all her success on screen, Jamil is arguably best known for her activism. In 2018, disturbed by a photo of the Kardashians on social media that listed what each of the sisters weighed, Jamil launched an online movement called iWay, which rapidly became a global revolution against shame. People were encouraged to submit photos of themselves listing their weight by the things they were grateful for or proud of, rather than by pounds and ounces. Now, the community has grown to encompass all aspects of allyship and radical inclusivity, and has its own YouTube channel, which provides a platform for other young activists. She is also the host of iWay with Jamila Jamil, one of 2020's breakout podcasts, which

• 3:56Elizabeth Day?

  has seen her interview everyone from anti-racism expert Ibram Kendi, Therese Witherspoon and Demi Lovato. And yet, for all the good work she does, Jamil has come in for her fair share of criticism. Perhaps that's the occupational hazard of being a woman with an unapologetic public voice, who does not seem to fear calling out media hypocrisy and double standards, and who claims to require only three hours' sleep a night. As she put it in an interview for The Guardian last year, "I would rather start the fights that I start and sometimes get into the trouble that I get into than sit here silently and be complicit." But, she also said, "I am a human prone to error." Jamila Jamil, welcome to How To Fail.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Hello, I may be the greatest failure you've ever had on this podcast. Hi, how are you?

• 4:47Elizabeth Day?

  Well, you could succeed at that. If that were actually true, that would be a massive success. I'm very good. How are you?

• 4:53Speaker 03

  I'm all right, I'm all right.

• 4:54Elizabeth Day?

  I love that quote that I ended on, that you are human prone to error, because it is absolutely what this podcast is all about. I know that you're a big advocate of progress, not perfection. Can you explain why?

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I mean, it was funny. When I first asked to do this podcast, I just thought, I don't know how I feel about this, because I love failure. And I wasn't sure quite which angle you were coming at failure from, since I've learned and therefore was really keen to come on and chat to you. But I look at failure as something quite noble, as meaning that you were willing to be vulnerable enough to try when success hasn't been guaranteed. And so I think to progress is to be human. And I think that the day that we have all of the answers, what is the point of existing anymore? I just don't think perfection is realistic. I think it's something that we definitely hold women towards the standards of more so than men. And I think that perfection has not only extended to the way that we look

• 5:52Speaker 03

  and how our bodies fit into patriarchal, stereotypical narratives, but also we are expected to have perfect minds, perfect behaviour, perfect abilities to please every single different type of individual, all at the same time simultaneously. And I refuse. And so I think that the most realistic way, as a solution-based human, that we can all progress incrementally, because change, real change, systemic change happens incrementally. It's frustrating, but that's how it is. Then we need to encourage progress and not strive for unrealistic perfection. We need to definitely call people out when they make mistakes. God knows I do, and I'm happy to be called out. But I think that we need to make sure that we keep championing

• 6:33Speaker 03

  progress and not ridiculing those who aren't at perfection yet. Because when us adults are mocking and jeering at those who still have more to learn, or those who admit to their vulnerabilities or apologise for a mistake, we have to remember that kids are watching us. And those same kids are going to maybe not put their hand up when they're afraid or unsure, and ask the important questions that help us remedy our own ignorance. So that's a very long fucking answer. Sorry.

• 6:58Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, I feel like this podcast episode is done. We might as well stop recording now, because you have so perfectly encapsulated everything.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  I'll see you later.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 7:10Elizabeth Day?

  But it's very interesting to me to talk about this particular topic in this particular cultural age, because so many people get in touch with me, as I'm sure they do with you, describing an overwhelming fear of failure. And that fear comes from what you've just identified, the pressure to be perfect, quote unquote, perfect, but also because, as you know only too well, if you put a foot wrong, we live in an age where you can be publicly shamed for making a simple mistake. So how do you counsel people get over that fear of failure?

• 7:43Speaker 03

  What I said at the top of this podcast is normally what I say to people, which is just that I find their willingness to be vulnerable very valiant and that I think we have a really fucked up perception of what success looks like. To me, success is just progress and success is happiness and success is growth. I love the risk of failure. I think not only does it make my life so much more interesting, it keeps me on my toes, it means that I feel always as though I'm engaging and learning more and growing more. But also, if it goes really tits up, which often it does for me, as we've all seen, because it's always very public and goes very far, it makes for a funny story at the pub with my friends who already think I'm an asshole.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  So I think that for me personally, I just try to reassure them that to fail and to have growth is to be human and it's something that you must really kind of check your ego at the door if you ever can, when it comes to taking on new pursuits, because there's nothing I find scarier than the words what if when it comes to a kind of existential crisis. I hate the idea of wondering what could have been had I just swallowed my pride enough to try and really just open myself up to things not working out the way I wanted it to. Everything I've ever done, I've been completely unprepared for, underqualified for, and had to just kind of figure it out on the job. I didn't know how to act when I started in the good place. I didn't know how to host radio when I started on Radio One.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  I've just winged it and almost hustled my way up. But I've been able to find all these different facets of my personality, all these different skills that I do or don't have. Because I actually was willing to try and what a boring and bland life I would have lived had I never found out about these sides to myself. Imagine if I'd never tried, I would never have known. And I think that in particular, again, women are told to stay in our lane. We're given this box that we're supposed to fit inside of. And we're told very early on, almost at school, who we are, what we're supposed to do, what we're going to do with our lives, how things are going to turn out by thirty, you meet someone to sit down, thirty five, you've got kids, forty, et cetera.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  We're kind of prescribed this life. And I think that that's really dangerous because look at how much we change, you know, at twenty one years old, you have no idea who you are. At twenty five years old, you have no idea who you're going to be. At thirty, you're still changing, even in the last four years, even in the last one year. Look how much we have changed as human beings, as individuals. So to deny yourself the periphery of life, I think, is a fucking shame. And so I just don't want to do that.

• 10:15Elizabeth Day?

  I think you are incredibly courageous in the way you call things out. And I wonder if that comes at a personal cost to you, because I just want to know for my own personal benefit. How do you cope with criticism?

• 10:33Speaker 03

  I think I'm just, I mean, A, I wasn't very popular at school. So I think the idea of being liked isn't a priority for me. And I think that's very liberating, especially when you're a woman in the public eye, because you're told that that's sort of your main objective. Not even to be the most talented, not to be the best, not to be the smartest, but to be very, very likeable to absolutely everyone, in spite of their multitude of varied tastes in every single way. And so because I don't prioritise being liked very much, or approved of, or understood, or even believed. I'm able to just take it on the chin and try and take it as a compliment, weirdly. Which sounds maniacal maybe, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that if someone criticises me, it means implicitly.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  I hope that they have faith that I'm capable of change. I think when people give up on you and don't bother to criticise you. It's actually much worse. I think when people are offering you, inviting you to change and to do better and to be better. Then it means that they know that you can handle it, you know, which is why I think it's really dangerous when we enter this territory of saying that women can't criticise other women. So do not disempower us in that way. We need to all be checked. That is the road to evolution. And when you check another woman, you are saying to her, I believe you can do better. Here is how. It's not unfeminine.

• 11:49Elizabeth Day?

  No, exactly. In fact, it's really patronising not to do it.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, we can take critique from each other. I'd also fucking way rather hear it from a woman than a man, if I'm honest. So, you know, if I'm doing something in particular that harms other women, I want to be told by my fellow women. Just to shut up, fuck off, learn and come back and do better.

• 12:09Elizabeth Day?

  What if you're being criticised for something you haven't done wrong?

• 12:12Speaker 03

  That's really frustrating and that's only really started happening to me in the last year and a half. Listen, I'm not gonna start a conspiracy theory, but I am just saying that as soon as I started standing up for Meghan Markle publicly. Who I didn't even know, I just felt as though there was an implicit bias against her in the British tabloid media. Almost as soon as I started doing that, this kind of lens of ferocity and smear campaigns and just shaming me for things I hadn't even done started. So it's been really, really odd and that is something that I find very difficult to swallow. It gives me severe anxiety because it's the one thing I wasn't prepared for. I knew being a public figure meant always being accountable for what I had done. I had no idea.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  How much bullshit is involved in the, you're kind of given this character when you become famous by the media. And for me, I guess it was this like soapbox, standing on screaming, smashing, bashing, slamming. Locking horns with chaotic, egotistical and scheming, manipulative, hysterical, lying. Munchausen having compulsive prick.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  If I could sum it all up, you know, and they give each woman a narrative. And I think what's been the most illuminating to me since this all happened, I think February was the worst of it, where people started telling me what my sexuality was for me. They started telling me that I had faked my illnesses and no one has ever gotten a job by being open about their illnesses. So I don't know what they thought my motivation would be for that. And then also said that I had something to do with the suicide of a famous woman in the UK that I had nothing to do with. So when that all happened, I think what it made me realise, especially when I was doing press after that time and seeing the way that my thoughtful, carefully constructed answers, when I was being interviewed by female journalists, were being twisted and gnarled and turned into these sort of

• 14:04Speaker 03

  newly constructed sentences that they'd created out of my entire paragraphs to make me sound like as much of a thoughtless, reckless, I guess, vacuous asshole as possible. I realised that, oh my God, all my life I have been reading about women and I've believed what I have been told. I have read their interviews and rolled my eyes at them, having no idea if any of these words have actually come from source. I've believed the headlines. I've seen strategically placed photographs of them looking like what could be constructed as a smug smile. Something we normally only ascribe towards women. I would see the carefully placed photograph next to the extra inflammatory headline and I would digest that, internalise that and decide that that was who she was in this world.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  So once it happened to me and once I was in the belly of the beast and right inside the machine, watching how they twist and turn your every move, facial expression and word, it made me just so angry with myself for the decades in which I have been complicit in a system that builds women up and then tears them down using smear campaigns and lies. And that just really bummed me out and has set me out on a path to now make sure that I tell everyone that we are all in the middle of, I guess, a kind of some sort of simulation against women.

• 15:20Elizabeth Day?

  A collective gaslighting, I mean, that's what you call it. There's a highlight on your Instagram stories, which I highly recommend everyone goes to watch, about media gaslighting. And you deconstruct headlines and images used of you. And then you ask us all to ask ourselves which women we find, quote unquote, annoying for no reason. And for me, I've always loved Keira Knightley, unfashionably, but I know that she triggers some huge reaction in people. And that's where it comes from. It was so interesting.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  For sure, she's a punchline and so is Anne Hathaway. And we've seen the same thing happen to Jennifer Lawrence. Everything she says gets twisted and turned because everyone loved her at first because she was so relatable and so funny. And then after a year and a half of overexposure that she had no control over, because that is part of this system of building a woman up, breaking her down. After a year and a half of everyone loving her so much, suddenly they were like, ugh, why is she trying to be so funny and relatable at the time? Why is she so full of herself? Ugh, we hate her. She faked falling over. The same falls that we found so charming a year before, we now decided were constructed and manipulative. We love the idea that a woman is constructed in some form. And, you know, I think Taylor Swift talks about this brilliantly in her documentary, Miss Americana, where it's like you have to navigate through this world carefully in

• 16:34Speaker 03

  order to be safe. And then when you do so, you're accused of being strategic, as if it's a bad thing, rather than a survival skill.

• 16:41Elizabeth Day?

  Mm, love that documentary as well.

• 16:48Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's Exposure and Response Prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable, so

• 17:31Elizabeth Day?

  you can live more of the life you want to live. If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail.

• 17:50Elizabeth Day?

  Let's move on to your first failure because it relates to so much of what we've just been talking about, which is, as you put it, your failure to be an obedient female celebrity or to be good at Twitter. What does an obedient female celebrity look like?

• 18:05Speaker 03

  I think silent and one who fears and obeys the press and their publicity teams, someone very media trained and someone who doesn't get involved in truly any subject that is relevant or controversial, even though they could sway their massive amounts of money and influence and power towards that subject and raise awareness. By the way, I'm not shaming these people. I completely understand. I mean, it's a hard path going against this and I've always been encouraged to take this road, have chosen not to, but someone who maintains the obedient, stick-thin figure, the one who dresses the way that they are expected to dress, behaves, smiles all the time, even when they are

• 18:46Speaker 03

  sad. Like, I think that there are more of those than aren't. I think since post Me Too, we've had more and more women start to speak up and speak out and rage against the machine. But I definitely feel as though that's my idea of an obedient female celebrity, someone, you know, who just stays in her lane. She looks pretty and she shuts the fuck up. And I personally don't think I could do that, and I haven't, because I would then feel complicit in the many crimes that this industry does play into in our society, in our culture, all of the lies that we tell, gender stereotypes, ableism, and the awful things we do around ageism and body dysmorphia that we contribute to.

• 19:29Elizabeth Day?

  Have you ever come under pressure to be that kind of obedient female celebrity? Because you do now make your living in Los Angeles, which has a reputation.

• 19:40Elizabeth Day?

  She said, putting it mildly, for expecting their female stars to behave a certain way. Have you ever come under pressure?

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Always, always. And I think I came under pressure, you know, at the beginning of my career, both when I first started out in the UK and the US. And after I've already done it and gone out there and been disobedient, I received pressure just to pull it back or to be warned that, you know, maybe you won't work again, or you don't want to go all Rose McGowan, you don't want to seem crazy, you don't want to seem difficult. There's a lot of fear mongering that happens. And I used to be told all the time in Britain, you know, I don't know why we think Los Angeles is the only place where this is prevalent, because it was really bad in the UK. But I would be told all the time to not try to be funny, to be likeable to men, and to just try to look thin and chic all the time. And that that was my strength, is that I was pretty and I had long legs. And so that's what I should play to.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  That was regularly told to me by men in this industry, by producers, by writers, by publicists even, not mine, but others, who I then wouldn't decide to work with, agents even. You know, they really just wanted me to be pretty and silent. And it didn't sit right with me, because this industry really fucked me up. When I was a kid, growing up, watching what they put out, I really thought this was real life and this is what I was supposed to subscribe to. And I think a big part of me entering this industry was with the hopes of Trojan horsing my way kind of through. I never strategically decided to be in this industry, but once I was given the opportunity, one of the only ways I could reconcile being part of it is if I used this position on the inside to just blow shit all up and expose what was going on and try and change it.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Because I think that this industry can be amazing and we put so many amazing things into the world. And why don't we just do more of that and less of the toxic shit?

• 21:25Elizabeth Day?

  Talking about your childhood there, did you ever see yourself on screen or in the pages of magazines? Did you see a representation of the kind of person you were? And did that make you feel alone, if not?

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't really see many South Asians. There still aren't that many. And I didn't really see any. I think Ashwari arrived briefly. She was in Bride and Prejudice. But outside of that, no, not on the runways, not on the covers of magazines, and definitely not as protagonists in films. Only ever as the sort of embarrassing, like highly stereotyped, often played by white people wearing brown makeup. Classic comedy Indian. Those were all I saw. And we were only allowed on mainstream television if we were ridiculing our own culture. And so it definitely had an impact on my self-esteem and made me feel as though I should either align myself to whiteness or blackness or just anything but what I'm from. I tried to distance myself from my culture.

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Because I thought there was something wrong with me, because that's what the messaging is. This is why I still despair at how ableist our industry is, because how must people with visible disabilities feel when they look out across the fashion pages of this industry and on screen and almost never see themselves represented unless they are the biggest tragic sob story? What's that do to your self-esteem? I can tell you from experience, it really harms you. It makes you feel as though you shouldn't be here. And so, you know, I guess these are reasons why I was pushed for change. Even if I fuck it up sometimes and stick my oh god, stick my nose in it. Just really, you just really make a mess.

• 23:00Elizabeth Day?

  Does that tie into

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Your heart's in the right place.

• 23:03Elizabeth Day?

  I know, I can tell, I can tell. Does that tie into your self-stated failure to be good at Twitter? Are you one of those people who feels the Twitter rage and needs to get something down and then regrets tweeting? Or is it something slightly different?

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Constantly. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me. Why? Last year during 2020, I was like, why the fuck do you think you are good at communicating? A, almost no one is good at communicating anything nuanced and helpful to refined and tricky, complex discourse in 280 characters. The fact that I used to try and start massive conversations in 140 characters back in the day is horrifying. But the fact that I still think I'm capable of getting any of my thoughts across properly or that I can still get away with having a sense of humour online and that people can just read when I have my tongue in my cheek, when I know that I'm a woman, so therefore completely evil. And B, a very privileged person, so also kind of evil. Inherently, I guess that's how I would be perceived.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  I can't believe that I didn't just stick to long form and stick to essays and podcasts. Being able to have my own podcast has been the first time I felt like Finally, people can understand what I mean when I speak, but I just clusterfuck it when I try and say things that are far too complex for a tweet on Twitter. So I've learned my lesson, hopefully. I think I did it again like a week ago. And I think that was my last time. I was like, that's it. This is your last time trying to have an important conversation in print in a limited amount of characters, you fucking idiot. And so I'm trying, I'm gonna try.

• 24:37Elizabeth Day?

  Do your friends or your boyfriend ever think, please, please don't do that? Like, please just step away from the Twitter?

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure, but I think everyone knows that I'm so impulsive, that I'm likely to just get it off my chest. And in my head, it's so clear what I want to say, but it would take so much longer to be able to say it properly. But normally it's too late by the time it happens. But I also think everyone who knows me, anyone who knows me, knows my intentions, knows what I mean. So I guess they kind of read these things in my voice and therefore they don't think it's problematic until it turns out to be a clusterfuck. But one thing I will say, and I know this sounds absurd maybe, but even when I fuck up, I'm kind of a little bit glad because at least then other people see how I fucked up and now they don't have to fuck up in the same way. A lot of people, they may not admit it, but they have learned from my clusterfucks online

• 25:30Speaker 03

  to avoid said clusterfuck themselves. So even, so because I always use a massive mess up that I've had to then come back, apologize and show people where I went wrong. I will show my workings out. Other people are always learning. I don't always have to be this perfect teacher in order for other people to learn with me. And I'm so down to be that character because I never had that person to look up to when I was younger. I never had that fallible woman who would make mistakes, get back up, dust herself off and try again. And I think we desperately need more of those figures in society because it's suffocating women, this idea that we have to be perfect. And upon your first mistake, you have to be ousted. Even upon your tenth mistake, look at the things that we let men get away with. Look at Shia LaBeouf.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  How many fucking chances is that man gonna have? Look at Emile Hirsch, strangled a woman, gets cast. Than a massive Hollywood film alongside Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt. Look at Quentin Tarantino, look at all of these people who have been called out for some heinous shit and are still able to work. And yet, look at the things that we, you know, if a woman smiles the wrong way, or if we don't like her haircut, if we don't like her Oscar speech, if we found it disingenuous and planned, we will look to cast them out of our society. The standards are completely different. Women have so much extra homework to do, and I just think it's unacceptable. And so I refuse. I'm deciding to live my life like an old white man who's allowed to make mistakes, come back and say I'm sorry, explain my mistakes and carry on.

• 26:58Elizabeth Day?

  Living life as an old white man is excellent, and I want that on a T-shirt.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  A progressive old white man, though, one who doesn't want to just hoard all of my privilege.

• 27:07Elizabeth Day?

  I just want to say that, speaking very personally, I remember reading this thing that you once said about how you don't make an effort with your physical appearance to go to work. As in, you wouldn't make more of an effort than your boyfriend would make from a point of principle. And it has honestly changed me that. Because I think so many women, and it's been super interesting during lockdown actually, but so many women feel that they have to put on makeup just to go out and buy a loaf of bread. And every time I'm tempted to do that, I think of you saying that. So I just want to thank you for that, and also for the stand that you take against airbrushing.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Well, no, look, I appreciate that. And I think where I was coming from was just that I think it's really bad for my self-esteem to have a bunch of makeup artists spend an hour and forty five minutes to work on my face before I can go out on camera. Or for me to lose an hour of sleep so I can get up extra early to look acceptable. For who? Who am I doing this for? I'm not really doing it for me. And I think lockdown really proved to a lot of us that we are not doing this for us. Because when given the opportunity, it's been tracksuit city and it's been no makeup and us getting used to our real faces. And I think that's glorious. And not getting our nails done. The idea that we've said sentences like, I must get my nails done as if it's a necessity, as if no one can see me with nails like this. No one cares.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  So I think we've all been quite liberated, but for me, the idea of caking on layers and layers and layers of makeup and contour, all of that feeds into the way that we feel about ourselves. So there's a subliminal messaging there that you are not good enough as you are, and it's going to take, basically you painting a new face onto your face before you can be accepted. The reason I think it made headlines when I said that is that I'd essentially at The Good Place, which is the comedy that I'm on, refused to come in earlier than the boys. I was like, what is this? Like, are you doing prosthetics on me? If not, you don't need an hour and forty five minutes, put some eyeliner and lipstick on my face, and tong a bit of my hair. I will come in at the same time as the boys, otherwise I will not be able to be as funny as the boys, as quick as the boys, as energetic, or be

• 29:08Speaker 03

  able to remember my lines as well as them. This double standard means that we're not sleeping enough, we're not eating enough, we're thinking about exercise too much, we're thinking about our bodies too much. This is all time that we could be spending healing, or working on therapy, or working on happiness, or getting orgasms. It infuriates me, the idea that I'm denied that extra time as if that's normal.

• 29:30Elizabeth Day?

  We're going to come on to body issues next, but I just wanted to ask you whether your impulse to share your honest opinion and how you feel about double standards publicly, is that important for your mental health? Because so many people, I think, find it really toxic, often without knowing, not speaking their truth.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  I think so, yes, for me. But I'm an ongoing experiment, so that doesn't mean everyone should necessarily do as I do, because clearly I'm a mess. But for me personally, when I was twenty six, I think it was, I tried to commit suicide and then I, I failed. So there, there's a failure I could have used on this podcast, failed at death.

• 30:14Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you for being honest about that. That's incredibly brave.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it just, it is what it is. But I guess my decision was that if I was gonna stick around in this dumpster fire of a hell earth, then I was gonna do everything completely differently. And up until that point, I'd been quite a repressed person. And I'd found out that my depression was possibly linked to repressed rage. And I think finding that out really just blew my mind of how much that made sense, that this numb kind of depression I have, I didn't have sadness. I wasn't comfort eating and crying into an ice cream, like I was, not, not in no way to belittle that, it doesn't mean that I'm sounding like I'm trying to diminish that form of sadness or mental health, but that's what I always thought the movie version of depression was, is that I would look sad. But actually, I was this high functioning, very numb, cold person.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  And that's because repressed rage means that you are, there's a dishonesty to it. You're not telling people how angry you are, you're not even really admitting it to yourself. And I think therein lies the gap between yourself and the person you're pretending to be, and that's where the numbness comes in. Now, I have no degree in literally anything, so this is just my theory that I've worked out kind of with a therapist. But that's where I think my kind of mote of empty was between me and who I pretended to be. This hyper tolerant survivor. Yeah. And, you know, the stoicism that I thought was important to portray and was gallant of me. Gallant? What's the word? No, never mind.

• 31:39Elizabeth Day?

  Gallant, yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, fine, sorry.

• 31:41Elizabeth Day?

  Gallant and valiant, together, gallant.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Oh, there we go, gallant. I do that all the time, oh my god. And I'm a malapropism queen, another failure. But if I could just make a complete one eighty, if I could completely change everything and just start saying everything that's on my mind all of the time, a kind of practicing of the micro no. It started with just saying, oh, sorry at Starbucks, and this isn't actually what I ordered, could I have the thing that I ordered, please? And that in itself just felt like such a huge thing to dare to do. And just slowly but surely, I built up to telling someone who would kiss me in a way that I didn't like, like, oh, I actually prefer kissing like this, not with your tongue in my stomach. And then it kind of moved forward to saying how I really felt in all interviews and then online and then everywhere in all situations.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  And so if you know me, you really fucking know me. I'm not holding anything back to my detriment sometimes. But it's just something I'm trying to see if I can work my way out of this prison that is being subservient, obedient woman.

• 32:44Elizabeth Day?

  Practicing the micro no, I feel like I'm getting so many truth bombs. Motive empty is something that I'll never forget. The fallible woman and practising the micro no, thank you.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  And gallant, the brand new word.

• 32:55Elizabeth Day?

  Gallant and of course gallant. What Oprah Winfrey would call a teachable moment. So your second failure is your failure to be kind to your body. Tell us about that.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh despair, it makes me feel sad even just hearing it. I just spent over 20 years being so mean to and about my body. This body that did so much for me and I took it completely for granted and just hated it because it wasn't being obedient to kind of very strict white patriarchal standards that hate women. And so I feel very, very sad now that look back on how much time I wasted, how much sex I didn't have because I was starving myself, so I had no sex drive, how much less fun I was, how much less fun I had, how much less brain space for innovation and creativity I had. And you know what I've done to my organs with all the shit that I've put in my body or haven't put in my body.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  You know, your body is an engine and you have to nourish it and I didn't for so long. And the reason I rage so hard against detox and diet products is because I fucking took them all. I took them all. Anything that was advertised by anyone, anywhere, I bought it, I took it, I spent all my hard earned pocket money or work money on it and have kidneys that don't work properly, my digestive system doesn't work properly, I don't know if it ever will again. I'm sure I've fucked up my bones. Like I have harmed my fertility. There's so much damage that will last forever because of the early years of disrespecting this body that was just trying to get me from A to B and do so much for me.

• 34:33Elizabeth Day?

  Do you know that you've harmed your fertility?

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes, I do, I do. And I don't want to go into it because then it becomes another thing that people will talk about on the internet. But yes, I definitely have. And we noticed that early on when my periods stopped when I was about fifteen at the height of my anorexia. And that was the kind of beginning of issues with that part of my body and with my fertility. And so it doesn't mean that I definitely can't have children. I've just made it much harder for myself, as many people who've had anorexia for a long time have. And one of the most interesting things was turning nineteen and making that decision back then, which was sixteen years ago almost, to stop starving myself. And I thought, because I wasn't just existing on like a hundred and eighty calories a day, that I was no longer anorexic, but I totally

• 35:18Speaker 03

  was. Anorexia comes in all different shapes and sizes, and it can happen at four hundred calories a day, six hundred calories a day, eight hundred calories a day. Orthorexia is something that's true, which is a terror of food, which I definitely had. And it's taken me really until the last four years of my life to get rid of it. Body dysmorphia, all these different things I've struggled with, all without realising, because diet culture is so hyper-normalised, every woman being on a diet, every woman complaining about how much exercise they're going to have to do to work off their dessert, or talking about foods as guilty or naughty or a treat. You know, it was all so normal to me that I didn't even know I had an eating disorder throughout my twenties, because every other woman in my industry, and even outside of this industry in my life, were

• 36:00Speaker 03

  just starving themselves perpetually, because we all wanted to look like, I guess, Alexa Chung. It's not her fault.

• 36:07Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. Did anyone step in at any point? Because you described the decision you made at nineteen as a person who generated one, but did you feel anyone helped or could see what was going on?

• 36:18Speaker 03

  No, no. And anorexics can tend to more often than not be very good at hiding their anorexia, which is how we're able to sustain the, I guess it's a disease, for such a long time. I think Caitlin Moran came on my podcast and told me that something like only thirty percent of people ever fully recover from anorexia, which leaves a vast amount of people still in turmoil. And so, no, no one stepped in. People would express concern, which I used to take as a compliment because I was so messed up. And, you know, it was the era just posed to heroin chic. So, you know, I really thought it was an achievement if people were concerned for how thin I was. Oh, I despair. I despair. I'm so glad that I didn't die in my early thirties

• 37:00Speaker 03

  so that I was able to at least have a few years of freedom from that thought toilet that is eating disorder mentality.

• 37:10Elizabeth Day?

  How do you feel about your body now?

• 37:13Speaker 03

  I just sort of don't care. I'm not that fussed about it. I'm not someone who stands there in the mirror. I fucking love Lizzo and Megan Thee Stallion and all these different amazing women who sit there and really genuinely love. I mean, Megan Thee Stallion also just is, I mean, they're all goddesses. Everyone's a goddess. But the point is that when there are women who really just fucking love their thighs and they love their arses and they love their bodies, I marvel at them, but I can't personally get there. And to say I could would be disingenuous of me. And I would give anything to feel the way about my body that those people do. And I'm a relatively slender-ish person. I'm a size sort of, I don't know, ten to twelve UK. But I can't stand there in the mirror and look at cellulite and be like, I love it.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  I appreciate it because it's a part of me, but I just tend to now, as a way of pushing past that, to just not really negotiate with my body image. I'm not going to try and love something for me personally that society spends so much time telling me to hate. Instead, I'm just not going to think about it. So I wear most of the time loose clothes or big baggy suits and I don't really look in a full-length mirror more often than maybe once every couple of weeks, unless I'm getting ready for an event. And I don't spend a lot of time getting ready in front of the mirror. So I don't have to look at myself too much. And so in doing so, it has been so fucking liberating to me because there could be a shit, an actual shit on my face and I would have no idea.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  All day, which sounds like a bad thing, but it's also very liberating because why do I need to know? Why is it any of my business what I look like? I don't want to think about it anymore. And in doing so, I have become so much more successful, so much happier. My relationship is happier, my friendships are better. I'm a better person. I'm still shit at Twitter, so I can't blame that on eating disorder. Unfortunately, I'm just shit at it. But other than that, I have such a full and happy life now. Because even the hours that we spend thinking about trying to love our bodies or actively loving our bodies, we're still thinking about them. And I just still think that that's what patriarchy wants. That's what the diet industry wants. That's what the beauty industry wants. It just wants us to be thinking about our looks all the time. And so any form of giving into that, I think, gives them what they want.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  And I'm far too rebellious for that. So who knows? Maybe one day I'll love it, but for now I just choose to not engage with it.

• 39:37Speaker 01

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• 39:56Speaker 02

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• 40:00Speaker 01

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• 40:07Speaker 04

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• 40:41Elizabeth Day?

  Do compliments help?

• 40:43Speaker 03

  No, they go down, it's that Georgia O'Keeffe, you know, compliments and criticisms or insults go down the same drain. None of it helps. It makes me uncomfortable because of years of dysmorphia. I don't want to think about it. And I've become very careful to not compliment other women in particular on if I notice weight loss. I used to be like, oh, you've lost a lot of weight, as if that was a good thing. And I realised, oh my god, that was so problematic. Because also then, if that weight comes back on, they're now thinking that you're going to be noticing it and judging it. So I'm very careful to never comment on that sort of thing. I'll comment on a dress, or if someone's glowing, or on their hair. But I'm very, very, very much more aware of the damage we do with compliments sometimes.

• 41:26Elizabeth Day?

  And just to be clear, I think there'll be people listening to this who are nodding their heads with every single word that you say, but who also feel like, I like to wear leather trousers and put makeup on and go out. And you're not saying that the two are mutually exclusive?

• 41:41Speaker 03

  Not at all. I fucking love makeup. And I love women in particular in leather trousers. Really hot. But I'm never telling anyone how to feel about their bodies. I'm not even out there preaching to love yourself. I'm just saying, for me personally, as someone who's been so fucked up for such a long time, I choose to just not even try. I'm just like, that's for me is an emotional minefield. I'm out. I just want to get on with my day. You do you, and whatever you do, just try to do it slowly, safely, and not at the advice of a celebrity. Like, if you want to gain weight, or lose weight, or gain more muscle, or have less muscle in your body, do whatever you want. But just do it slowly, safely. No quick fix ever works. It only ever harms you. And it's designed for you to fail, so

• 42:25Speaker 03

  that you'll have to keep using it again, and again, and again. Don't ever use laxatives. And please consult a proper nutritionist, someone with certified skills.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  And a health practitioner to guide you through these massive long-term changes in your body. That's the only thing I ever try to subscribe to. I'm never telling anyone what to look like, what size to be. Just to please do everything carefully, safely, and to never take diet advice from these fucking lying asshole celebrities here. Who I see in person, they don't fucking look like that. And I know how much surgery they have, and I know all of the tricks they use. I know all their trainers. I know how many nutritionists they have. I know what goes into, I know that they're wearing a weave in their adverts selling you hair like growth gummies. I see these people, I'm on set with some of these people. I know what really goes into the appearance that they pretend to you comes from a powder they are hawking to you over the internet that they've never taken once in their life. They're awful of shit, literally.

• 43:19Elizabeth Day?

  And.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Well, because they haven't taken the laxatives they're selling you. So the shit's still in there. Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 43:27Elizabeth Day?

  I should point out that, no, no, no, I should point out that Iway and you have been instrumental in making Facebook and Instagram change their policies around celebrities and influencers promoting diet and detox products to minors. And I often think that those sort of achievements are overlooked. And I wonder if it ever frustrates you.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  It does frustrate me, but it doesn't surprise me. Why would we ever choose to big up a woman when we could instead focus on her micro mistake that didn't actually harm anyone? Why would we ever talk about the thing that she did that saved or helped a generation of kids avoid something that was incredibly damaging and detrimental, that we have statistic proof of being damaging and detrimental? Why would we ever congratulate a woman for something she did that was helpful when we could instead just make a headline out of a mistake that she either did make or didn't make that we just made up from quote unquote a source? So it doesn't surprise me. It is annoying, but I guess it goes along with my decision to check my ego at the door. If I was doing any of this for praise or popularity, I would be in the wrong game.

• 44:32Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. One of the things that I find funny that I noticed when I was researching for this interview

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Oh gross.

• 44:39Elizabeth Day?

  Is how many grateful, no, no, no, it's how many grateful dads you get. You get a lot of dad words saying to you, I'm the father of a 13 year old girl, I just want to thank you so much. Or like emailing you for advice. Yeah, I feel like you're the guru for dads of teenage girls.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  I'm big with dads. I don't know what to tell you. I think I've only got 16% of my followers are men and I swear it's all dads. Like it's all terrified dads. They don't fancy me. They just want tips on how to communicate with their daughter. I love how many of them listen to my podcast. I have like a big dad following on my podcast and so much feedback from them because, you know, kids aren't educated at school and neither are parents. I don't understand why we still haven't stepped up our education programme to make kids media savvy, to make kids understand what goes behind social media, to explain photo editing to them and the dangers of it, to explain eating disorder stuff. But we should also be making that same manual for kids. This is the first generation where we've had kids this far ahead of their parents.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Parents don't even know what the kids are looking at anymore or what they're learning. This is a nightmare. Schools need to stop fucking going on and on about condoms on carrots and igneous rock and all the other nonsense they teach us that we're almost never going to use. I don't need to learn about Amber Lynn. I need to learn about consent. I need to learn about Photoshop. I need to learn about eating disorders. I need to learn about porn and so do my parents. That's where we need to spend money in the education sector, in my opinion, is actually preparing people for life.

• 46:03Elizabeth Day?

  And while you're at it, teach children about tax and fertility. That's the other thing that I would add to that excellent Jimmy La Jamil syllabus.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  And finances.

• 46:11Elizabeth Day?

  Finances, which leads us seamlessly onto your final failure, which is that you lost all your money at 30. Tell us that story.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, just so shit with money. So shit with money for so many reasons. One, I think, again, school didn't teach me anything. How is this possible that we're given debit cards at 16 and we're able to open our own bank accounts? But school literally doesn't mention it. We do not have classes where we learn about interest, about credit cards, about credit, about how to, you know, eventually be able to get on. I don't know if you want to maybe have a mortgage one day. Or start a business. You learn none of this stuff. So I had no idea about saving. I was totally unprepared. And we don't all come from super educated backgrounds. I sure as shit didn't. So my parents didn't know anything about saving either. And we were really poor. So, you know, money was something that when you got some, you spent it on a nice little treat. And I guess I took that

• 47:02Speaker 03

  as the way that I would then go on to, even when I made a lot of money in this industry, I just spent it all of the time. I didn't know how to save. And also, as a woman, I think I felt very uncomfortable being successful and having a lot of money. And so I used to just try and spend it and share it as much as possible. And I was incredibly, you know, overly generous. Like I'd meet a stranger and they would say they needed a knee operation and they were two years on a waiting list on the NHS. So I'd be like, here's a stick of thousands of pounds. Complete stranger. And that's a nice thing to do. But also I wasn't planning to protect myself. And I think the third layer of it was also just being quite mentally ill and us not really talking enough about how inner chaos can present itself as external chaos, as financial chaos.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  I was just spending as if I wasn't going to be here very long. And I think it's because I didn't think I was going to be here very long. So it was just a kind of clusterfuck that led me to making all of this money in this industry and just hemorrhaging it. Also, just having an eating disorder, if you're a binge and starve person, really fucking expensive. Because the binging part is very costly.

• 48:08Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, you wrote to me that you you spent so much on food and then you lost a clothing contract.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. Well, that's because I spent so much on food that I ended up eating so much that I gained so much weight that I lost a clothing contract because I was too big for the samples. And I remember just trying to hide from them quite how much I was eating and then getting papped, buying like six cakes at eight o'clock in the morning on my own. And then clocking that I've been papped and then instead trying to pick up a healthy pair and hoping this will be the photograph that makes it into the Daily Mail. But it wasn't. It was the cakes. And so I was sort of busted. But yeah, that's fine. And I'm glad I didn't starve myself for any kind of clothing contract or anything else. But yeah, I literally ate my way out of parts of my career.

• 48:53Elizabeth Day?

  I'm really, really glad that you chose this failure because I think so few people, and specifically women, talk about money or feel that they can. And as you say, most of us aren't equipped with the knowledge when we come out of school. But after you went through this financially difficult patch, how did you recover from it on a practical level? Like, what did you do? Did you get a financial advisor?

• 49:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I got a financial advisor. I was very, very lucky to ever get a job again at thirty. You know, moving to America to start a brand new life was a very, very bold thing to do, considering I was going to try my hand at being a writer again, a thing I'd never done. And I didn't want to be on television anymore. But I was able to kind of figure shit out to be able to do work that I knew how to do, which was TV hosting and then eventually accidentally falling into acting. But once I did have money again, this time around, I went and I found two people who I trusted, who guided me through learning really about pensions, about tax, about saving, about planning, about budgeting, all these things that I just hadn't learned about. And another thing that I think is really important, specifically when we're talking about women and finance,

• 50:02Speaker 03

  is that we are eighty percent of the fucking market. We are consumers. We are the main consumers. As a gender, by far and away, we consume the most. And we are the ones most targeted by advertising, even if it's for cleaning products or for household stuff or for beauty stuff, because they think every single part of our bodies needs to be fixed because they've convinced us that it's broken. So with women being the most targeted to spend our money, we're the ones who should most be taught how to save it and how to budget it. And so therefore, I kind of find it a little bit convenient that we aren't schooled about that in our magazines or in our schools. And we are just left open and vulnerable to being manipulated into that having that must have bag, that it top, that must have makeup, like this must have new colour.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  We're prescribed a brand new body type every decade. We're prescribed a new hairstyle that we have to have or a new way of doing our nails. Men are just not targeted in this way. I mean, not as much. Maybe it's growing now because they've run out of inches on our bodies to commodify. You know, they're now telling us we need our earlobes down and our elbows down and our knees lifted, et cetera, which is real. So I think it's happening more to men. But with women being this much under attack when it comes to consumerism and capitalism, we're the ones who most need to learn how to defend ourselves financially and protect ourselves financially.

• 51:21Elizabeth Day?

  I'd love to talk to you about LA because I love LA. I feel like it's my spirit place. I've really missed it this year because we haven't been able to travel, obviously. But explain to me why you moved to Los Angeles and what is it about that particular place that has? I don't know whether you feel it's been good for you, whether you feel it's been liberating, but what's the impact that that city's had on you?

• 51:45Speaker 03

  Multiple good impacts. First of all, I'd say that you can't blame your problems on LA. And that's been really good for me because I think living in places like London or even spending a lot of time in New York, I was able to blame my inner chaos on the very like clear external chaos of living in a city where people are just on top of each other and your money doesn't go very far and your apartment is too small, your flat, sorry, I've already become a bloody yank. But your flat is too small and you know, someone farts in your face on the tube in the morning. Like, you know, by nine AM, I was already fucked off by tangible things that had happened during the day, like the weather is shit and people are banging into me all the time. And so I was able to blame a lot of my problems on that.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  And I think it therefore meant it took me a lot longer in life to work out that, oh, I am a mentally ill person. I didn't realise that for such a long time. And coming here, it's like, oh, it's really sunny and there's loads of space and your money goes further and the food's just better quality because there's more sun. People are really fucking friendly. So no one's banging into each other, you know, you have so much space as a pedestrian. I didn't have anything to really tangibly complain about. So I realised that, oh, this pain that I'm carrying, that's on me. So for me, that was very good because I needed to work out sooner rather than later that I was struggling emotionally and psychologically.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  But also the industry here is way ahead of the UK industry in that women in their 50s and 60s who are African American or they are brown women or like women from different ethnicities of all kinds of different ages and shapes and sizes have really big jobs over here. That feeling of you expire at 30 doesn't really exist in America. And I think that that's really cool. And I feel as though they love a multi hyphenate, which is what I am, which is what most people are.

• 53:37Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  We're all multifaceted and we don't know that. We're not encouraged to find that out, especially when we're women. Cause patriarchy does not want women to know how strong and adaptable and fucking fantastic and special and unique we are. And so we're told just to pick one thing that you'll maybe be allowed to do. And then just sit down and shut up and be grateful and never complain about that situation. And so in America, they love multifaceted people. It's actually considered strength to be jack of all trades. They're not really looking for a master necessarily. And I think that's really good for me because I am a master of fucking nothing and I and I am someone who loves to explore different sides of myself and I've been able to do that here. And it's been congratulated rather than criticised, which it was in the UK.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  And I urge the UK to grow in diversity and grow in their ability to allow people to be more multifaceted.

• 54:31Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I just agree with every single thing you've just said, which makes for a very boring interviewer.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  No, I'm sorry. I'm also like, I'm like a caffeinated chatty Cathy who's just like not letting you get a word in. I'm so sorry. Uh, I'm just bursting with opinions. Can you imagine? I tried to condense all of this into tweets. Can you, of course, it's a disaster. Of course I'm a fucking disaster. Why? Why, Jamila? Why?

• 54:58Elizabeth Day?

  Do you do you know?

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Shout that on my balcony.

• 55:02Elizabeth Day?

  Do you, do you have a WhatsApp? Do you love a WhatsApp voice note?

• 55:06Speaker 03

  No, no, I don't. No, I do. I do. I do like and need a back and forth, especially in chat. It's just when I get fired up about something, which normally happens on a podcast, I just turn into just as Roadrunner. But no, I don't like a WhatsApp. No, no, I love a WhatsApp chat though, especially a group chat. I live for that. It's how I've maintained my Englishness and all my knowledge of what's going on in London. It's via my group chats with my mates.

• 55:36Elizabeth Day?

  So you went to LA because you wanted to write more.

• 55:41Speaker 03

  I just wanted to be a writer in comedy.

• 55:43Elizabeth Day?

  You just wanted to be a writer?

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:45Elizabeth Day?

  What's next? Do you think you will end up being a more full-time activist or more full-time writer? Or will you just continue being the brilliant multi hyphenate that you are?

• 55:57Speaker 03

  I think I'm just going to continue not really having a plan, if I'm honest. Like, I came here to be a writer. That took a really unexpected turn. As I said earlier, like, I love being open to the periphery. I think that's where all of the magic in my life has happened, in the most unexpected places. And so I think I'm just going to carry on trying things. And then I will carry on my activism until the day that I die. I'm continuing to grow I Way. I love the podcast. It's such a fun thing to do, so I'll carry on with that. And we're building out the YouTube channel and we're working on just more and more content to give more and more people a use of my platform. I've got this big old platform and clearly I'm not a fucking expert. So people from the beginning of my career were always like, pass the mic, pass the mic. And I've been like, I don't have the mic. I've got a fucking dildo that you can pretend is a mic.

• 56:42Speaker 03

  Or you can wait till I get it and then I can actually pass it on to people. So I feel like now with three and a half, almost million followers and 1.3 million on I Way. And we have all this engagement and this podcast, I now have the mic, I have space. I can force younger people who are more experienced or interesting or charismatic or funny or intelligent than I am into a space just with me and just be like, I won't do this unless you allow this person to come with me. I'm now able to pull those strings and, I don't know, throw my weight around in that way. And so now it's all about passing the mic over to those who are more, you know, who are bigger experts than I am. So I think that's what I'm doing next.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  And if I don't die, I'll just carry on with activism. I'll write a book and I'll carry on making documentaries, which is something I did when I was younger that now I'm getting back into. Because I really just love learning and I love learning with other people. So that's the main goal forever.

• 57:38Elizabeth Day?

  And how has this interview about failure been for you?

• 57:43Speaker 03

  It has been a success, if that's what you are asking me. I have, I've loved it. I don't know, I'm sure I shall continue to fail, but I do promise I will keep getting back up and trying something new. You know, I said recently in a podcast with, I think Angela Scanlon, that maybe I'll leave one day and just become a therapist. I have no idea. But I promise to continue to be open and transparent and to show my workings out and to say sorry when I'm wrong. And just to keep trying to bring everyone along on this transparent journey with me, because it's really the main purpose I serve is just no more lies, no more haze, no more bullshit. Let's just be real. Even if we get it wrong, let's at least just be real.

• 58:23Elizabeth Day?

  Jamila Jamil, keep failing as gloriously as you do. And thank you so much for the important activism that you do on behalf of the rest of us. And thank you also for coming on How to Fail.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  Oh, thanks for having me.