Good Life Project - Jameela Jamil | On Adversity, Celebrity and Activism

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

Jameela Jamil an actor, writer, podcaster, and activist. Leaving behind a high-profile life as a host and DJ on two of the UK's most iconic TV and radio shows, a health scare led her to make a radical change that delivered her into a new life in Los Angeles with the intention of shifting into writing. But, fate had a different plan. Never having acted before, she auditioned for and landed a starring role as Tahani on NBC's The Good Place, opposite Ted Danson and Kristen Bell. Seeking to leverage her growing influence to become a voice for change and equality, she launched activism platform, I Weigh. This rapidly became a global movement to mobilize activism, around issues of mental health, climate change, equality for marginalized groups, and what she calls "radical inclusivity." In April, Jamil launched the ‘I WEIGH podcast, where she hosts thought-leaders, performers, activists, influencers, and friends, exploring how they are working through their past shames to find where their value truly lies.You can find Jameela Jamil at:Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/jameelajamilofficial/Jameela's Podcast : https://www.earwolf.com/show/i-weigh-with-jameela-jamil/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is Jamila Jamil, who was a household name in the UK for years, hosting shows on T4 and on BBC One, before launching into the spotlight in the US, playing the role of Tahani on the acclaimed TV show, The Good Place. What's so powerful about her story, beyond her life in the world of entertainment though, is where she's come from and how she is choosing to use her notoriety for social good. Growing up the daughter of Indian and Pakistani parents,

she was often bullied and experience made tougher after being diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is a condition that affects the body's connective tissue and leads to chronic pain in so many, including her. Through her teen years, she endured more trauma, anorexia, and then a car accident that led to a spinal injury

that would really profoundly change her relationship with her body, eventually finding her way into the world of work and then TV and radio in the UK. She headed over to the US after an awakening that we talk about in our conversation, but found herself in front of the camera performing on a set with her childhood heroes on network TV. But it was her decision to speak truth to power and become an advocate for equality, inclusivity, and self-determination that has really become the center of who Jamila is and how she shows up in the world,

a place she describes as being post-shame. And that led to the launch of social advocacy platform I Weigh in 2018 on a quest to bring together and amplify the voices of changemakers, along with a new podcast by the same name, a video channel, and really a bigger social movement to change things at scale. We dive into all of this in today's really eye-opening and inspiring conversation. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just

15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot if we need him! Y'all need a pilot?

Flight Risk. I'm hanging out in New York right now. You're in LA, which I guess you've been for a number of years, but originally came up in London. That would have been probably like late 80s and 90s is when you really were coming of age there. Yeah, I mean, I sort of spent a lot of time in Pakistan and Spain

in my most formative early years. And then we kind of settled in London fully fully after I was about probably eight years old so I was all over the place I was back and forth we basically went wherever the pound was strongest got it what was that it's not not military though was that like a business type of thing for for careers or parents or something or no no literally just we didn't have any money so we would go wherever the pound was strongest uh and so sometimes it really depended on the the economy of different countries and that's where we would go and live especially if we had relatives that we could go and live with because we couldn't pay rent so uh for the first couple of years i moved

around a lot and then somewhere between about six and eight i started to really kind of settle back into england and started going to school here and i I grew up in sort of all over London, really, again, depended on rent, depended on when they lift the roof out of our houses. Yeah. Did you have a sense of that? I mean, even when you were a little kid, did you have that sense of that's really what was going on, or is it only in hindsight? No, I definitely knew. We were a very close-knit family. And I think especially when you're in a single-knit family and you know I think especially when you're in a single parent household there isn't much space for your mother to lie to you about what's going on or who the men at the door who are taking the television are and so you know

I think I had a very palpable understanding of our economic situation very young but you know I wasn't starving or anything I wasn wasn't completely homeless. I lived in a time in England where we really took care of those who were disadvantaged compared to now, you know, we used to, and it wasn't astigmatized. If there was a single mother who was looking after two kids who couldn't manage to work full time as well as look after those two children, then we would help her find housing and we would help her have an income that was possible for her family to live off of and so I feel incredibly fortunate we also used to help kids with school fees so I was able to get assisted places as what we used to call

them which is similar to a scholarship for disadvantaged children you know so I had a sense of it but I also felt very taken care of by my government in a way that I don't think a lot of children can relate to nowadays. It was the sort of the last of the really good side of, I guess it was just they were the last really good days for those of us who were already taking a beating from life. Yeah. And I mean, I know as especially as a young kid, there was a lot to take care of. I mean, there was a lot going on. And also it sounds like from the earliest days, you've dealt with struggles with everything from hearing loss to health issues, Ehlers-Danlos when you were sort of a kid also. So to know that there was someone or something or some safety net that was in some way, shape or form going to help you be okay. I really, I don't know how Americans cope without a national health service. I think that's one of

the number one things I feel so grateful for in my childhood is free doctors and nurses, like growing up as a chronically sick child with also a lot of mentally ill people in my family. We'd all be dead without the national health Service. There was no way we would have been able to afford insurance or co-pays and all these different things. I can't believe the state of the healthcare in this country. And I love America, but so many of the homeless people that you see, these aren't people who are just all drug addicts and sort of fuck-ups. These are people who often got sick or a family member got sick and they were crushed by their medical bills and that's what's led them to lose their house and therefore their job and everything else. And so the National Health Service is how I survived and I really, really don't know what I would have done without them. Again, it was a better time. And also, you know, I had a disability as a child, so we would make, we would give parents extra support

if you had a child with a disability. This is something that's, again, being rolled back in Britain right now. Yeah. I'm curious, did you, I mean, obviously as you, as you got older and, you know, especially in your recent, probably last decade or so, there's a really strong sense of service to sort of like a bigger society and especially to those who are in some way disenfranchised or don't have a sense of power. Do you feel like that early experience with you in any way planted the seeds

for this sort of like orientation with you? Yeah, of course. I definitely don't do this for fun. It's not fun. Putting myself in the firing line with society and media is not a decision that one takes lightly it doesn't make your existence more glamorous it doesn't make you sleep better uh you don't earn more money you definitely earn significantly less money uh obviously I'm still uh fine and living in privilege but this is a this the only reason to be this

relentlessly annoying publicly is because I grew up knowing what it was like to be on the other side of this and to be a victim of the pitfalls of our society and our narratives and that's why now that I have a position of power which I was told I would never ever reach because of what I was born into I feel such a strong sense of duty to alert people to a call to arms, to identify the poison in our culture and push back against it. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it absolutely does. What's interesting also is of the things that you struggled with or lived with as a young

kid, one of them was a certain amount of congenital hearing loss, if I know correctly, which I guess to a certain extent remains to this day. A friend of mine, who you may know also, she's out there, Jennifer Pasteloff. I've heard of her. Yeah. She began to lose her hearing and she found that it made her hyper attentive to those around her because she had to really, she reads lips. She didn't, she didn't study to read lips. She just learned that's the way that she needed and she needed to pay intense attention. And it created almost this zone of connection with people around her that she felt while the hearing loss is something that, you know, she didn't wish for and she struggled with

that capacity to be hyper-present with people has been something that she really treasures. Yeah, I think, I mean, it kind of came in two different forms for me. I became hyper-observant because you have to learn how to read people for more than just their words, which can be incredibly valuable later on, especially if you find yourself in a snake pit like this industry that I'm in, where very rarely do people's words match their intentions you can actually read someone like an MRI almost but also it made me quite a starey person so I stare a lot still and that makes me seem creepy and freaks people out so it's been hit and miss but I definitely wouldn't go back and change that time because of how it

shaped me and how much it made me extra appreciative of music and how comfortable it made me in silence and how much more thoughtful I think it made me because I had a stillness that a lot of children don't have access to because of the chaos of puberty etc and just getting older so I had a very tranquil you know and I grew up in a chaotic uh household and I had a very tranquil existence within that because there's only so much chaos you can access when you can't hear yeah I know when you're I guess you hit your late teens 17ish or something like like that. I guess up until then also at some point, social anxiety, anorexia becomes a part of your existence as well, sort of layering onto everything else that you were sort of dealing with.

Yeah, but it's also just called being a girl in the 90s. I don't know if any of us escaped without anxiety and some sort of eating disorder behavior. Mine was definitely extreme, but not really more so than the other girls in my school. Everyone had a problem with their body image. There were girls, you know, I sat next to a girl in school who used to bring in a weighing scale every day and she would stand on it while eating her lunch to see if the dial would go up and that would stop her from overindulging. So, you know, I, yes, I definitely struggled severely with anorexia, but also really not in any way that stood out. I wasn't much thinner than the other girls in my school. We were all trying to have jutting hip bones and jutting ribs because we were told that that was what was the only standard of beauty and the only standard of worthiness in a woman was to be as small and childlike in your frame as possible. Yeah, I mean, and also we're talking about the, I guess, late 90s here. So that was the time in fashion where the quote heroin chic comes from, right? Which is, reflecting on that, you're like, how?

I know. How does that become the standard? Oh, it's so embarrassing. It's just like there's, and it was also a time where we were learning for the first time truly very publicly in mainstream media about actual famine that was going on in third world countries. So the idea that over in the West, where we had access to abundance, that we were trying to emulate the look of famine that was genuinely currently happening to tens of millions of people around the world is so mortifying when you think about it that it's hard to swallow. Yeah, it strains the way that people can be influenced so powerfully at that. I mean, what's kind of fascinating about what you're sharing too is that so we're going

to bounce around a little bit. Towards the end of last year, you end up on the cover of British Vogue with ostensibly 16 women, actually 15 women in a little slot, which is for a mirror. So the person looking at it feels that they have a space there too. The photographer that was chosen for that, Peter Lindbergh, who's legendary in the space and also legendary in an interesting way in that he was somebody who actually hated makeup on women. He wanted nothing to do with airbrushing back in the day or Photoshop. And yet in the 90s, he was also one of the people who was sort of like photographing a lot of the people who sort of like set the standard for what was to be the pinnacle of

beauty then. I think so was everyone who would have been what in his 20s and that was just the beauty standards. I mean, post Twiggy, David David Bailey discovered Twiggy so I think we all have a slight bone to pick because David Bailey um but uh no disrespect to Twiggy I think she's beautiful and and that's none of that is her fault but the world surrounded her aesthetic as the only singular beauty standard um but I think young photographers back then were all were all just photographing what was in front of them and that was emaciated girls and uh what I liked about working with Peter is that again he wouldn't let me wear any makeup wouldn't let me airbrush uh it was 7am and because I had jet lag that's 4 a.m in my time and I felt like I had um testicles really

underneath my eyes and he loved that and he was like great let's bring out let's bring out those testicles and shot me in HD no airbrushing cover of oak no makeup uh and I loved it it felt really liberating and he got me to wear pajamas rather than anything kind of structured and fancy and I will I will always remember uh him and his work fondly but yeah I mean he was definitely part of uh every I mean everyone in that time was complicit in a culture that they thought was acceptable and they thought it was beautiful yeah I, when it becomes normalized on that level, it's just sort of like, this is the way it's supposed to be across everybody. And you can imagine what it would take to really just stand out and say, and say, no, I mean, effectively

you would have had to be willing to walk away from your career. Yeah. Which is, which we now see a lot of people doing on a different level. I'm lucky I didn't have a career because I was not a successful teen model. You know, I didn't make it as a teenager. I started and I went to castings and everything, but I was also trying to juggle school at the same time. And I was South Asian and there were just no South Asian models at the time. So it was definitely difficult to break through in that moment. And then I got hit by a car and pulled out of the modelling industry thank god otherwise I'd probably be dead now but um I'm very very very very happy that I was not successful during that time because I don't like considering how badly I've already messed up my organs from my eating disorder to behavior during that time I can't imagine what would have happened if I was also smoking and taking cocaine and maintaining emaciation for as long as it would take to

be successful in a modeling career. Yeah. I know you've described the car accident in a weird way, almost as a blessing, something that ended up to a spinal cord injury and pretty much took you out of being involved in people outside of your your home for better part of a year maybe longer yeah I was bed bound for ages it wasn't that bad I I had uh really strong painkillers and uh cable tv so while I would never undermine the experience of someone else uh damaging their back I actually found that to be quite a good year I had a morphine drip and I've I was I was living my best life eating ice cream off my face watching Frasier uh so I don't have I don't have terribly poor memories of that time but I had very vivid memories of that time because

I used to watch television day and night because I didn't really have any friends and I in my family were not in their most social moment so I was alone most days all day every day pretty much other than when I would need to go to the toilet and so I would watch television compulsively and I think a lot of what I learned came from TV so for better or worse I learned how to identify my mental illness from watching Oprah and I learned comedy from friends and Frasier and and uh sister sister and I learned I guess probably how to host just via osmosis because I went I've stumbled into the entertainment industry and I've always just sort of instinctively known what to do and how to carry myself without any kind of media training, any kind of acting school or anything like that. I have just always had an instinct for how to perform on camera, which must come from just compulsive, addictive television

watching. I just knew what to do. It's a bit like the king of comedy, Rupert Popkin. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what the difference between me and you is you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk so you go from there to um i guess you taught english for a year or something like that yeah i think about two years and then you land you end up replacing alexa chung on t4 um no experience basically walking and saying okay i'm i'm here i mean interesting in that like you just shared it wasn't like something you trained to do you didn't aspire to be in entertainment from the time you're a kid yet felt oddly comfortable it sounds like from the earliest time yeah i mean also i thought the entertainment industry was really vacuous and because of how I'd seen how much it had damaged my own self-esteem and how erased South Asians were just people of color in general where I never

had an interest in in the entertainment industry like beyond my teens and so I really didn't expect it but then I found out that the payment was a thousand pounds a day and that's what a teacher makes in a month and I went to the open call and somehow just delivered in that audition I was up against the entire country but I a I think had the confidence of someone who thinks this is such a long shot I'll never make it so I may as well just relax and enjoy it which ultimately always helps you perform better uh the same thing happened with the good place audition but b I just I don't know why but i just knew exactly what to do and that must have just been from subliminally studying television during my car accident years shit faced on

it somehow bypassed all of this and just went straight into muscle memory. So you start out in front of a screen. Not too long after that, you end up actually on BBC One hosting a show which, from what I know, and you can tell me if this is right or not, so the official chart was never hosted by a woman before, was it? No. Before you? No, it had been on air for 60 years, and they'd never let a woman take the reign. Because it's a very authoritative show. It's like the Billboardboard 100 you know you are

the you are there is the authority you get to hand the number one over the art over to the artist and for some reason it was just never given to a woman and I was very lucky to be made that first woman and so I got to make history at 26 which was very unexpected and a lot of pressure but an experience that I enjoyed very much it took a minute to find my feet because again similarly to TV I hadn't trained I hadn't done student radio I mean I hadn't really gone to school past the age of 16 so I was thrown right in the deep end and just had to figure out how to swim it took a minute but eventually it went really well and the ratings were good and I will always look back on that as a defining moment for my career, because it was the first time in my four years on television at that time where it wasn't about how I looked and it wasn't about my skirts and, just with my voice. And, you know, it's a difficult job. You have

to drive the desk. So you have the whole of the BBC at your fingertips and you are controlling every single sound that people can hear at the same time as telling a story while a timer is counting down and you have to perfectly hit that timer and you're live. So there's no error for any mistakes. And it turns you into a less self-conscious and a better host a maybe person because you become less contrived as an individual yeah I mean it's interesting also because you're so you're then in a career where it is a hundred percent about your voice and a hundred percent about um your ability to relate to people with nothing but the sound of your voice coming straight into their ears I guess you can't relate. No, not at all.

But I mean, the difference between what I do and what you were doing was the real-time nature of it, which is profoundly different. You know, we're sitting here, I'm in my studio in New York, you're in your place in LA and we're making this happen. And we can touch up anything that happens later. If somebody stumbles or fumbles or wants to reframe, they can. But when you're on the mic and you're live and you know potentially millions of people are listening to you and it's really fascinating training in being just absolutely present in the moment and having to. It's like it forces you to

let go of whatever you thought you should have or shouldn't have said three seconds ago because you can't stay there. You have to be in like whatever the second is right then. I think you can do anything after you've done a BBC, anything within entertainment. You can't go and do brain surgery on a child, but you can, you can do anything within this industry. Once you've done live radio where you are the controller as well as the host, it's terrifying. It is terrifying, but it's incredibly exhilarating you can't sleep until like 4 a.m because you're still buzzing every single week it never wears off because it's a huge risk your entire reputation is on the line every time the red light that says on air comes on and all my

tv hosting was mostly live as well by the way way. So at 22, I jumped into this industry. They put me straight on live television by myself at like 5 a.m. So I've only ever really known live until now, which is why acting felt really fucking strange to me. All the takes and the sets. Oh, my God. So it was almost too much room for error. I think I made more mistakes because I had too much room for mistakes. That's interesting. It's almost like you have the luxury, you know that you can. Yeah. So you do. And humans have the capacity to overthink. It's one of our most sort of

stifling habits. A dominant trait for most people, I think. Around the same time, you're also writing for a company magazine. Was writing something that was following you from an earlier time, or was it sort of like an emerging interest or just something that you happened to fall into? Again, I fell into it. I've got the most charmless career trajectory that has ever happened. And I didn't even shag anyone to get what I have. I didn't even do that work you know what I mean I didn't even I gave no hand jobs whatsoever like I no one was interested actually I think I would have been the only person to ever fuck their way down an industry uh because it's not my greatest skill I'd say but I I just I have somehow maybe it's the universe's way for making up for what a shitty start I had,

but I've somehow just been at the right place at the right time consistently for over a decade in a way that mesmerizes me. I'm baffled by it. But because I had this big shiny new job and because I was being noticed for my fashion sense at 22 or 23, as is often the case with a young, new emerging it girl, which is what I was I was asked if I would write a fashion column and after writing my first two I realized I didn't really care about fashion at that time I didn't know what I was talking about I'd never had money until now so I'd never grown up with like a pedigree in understanding fashion I just thought it was something you used to you know cover your tits so you don't get arrested so I asked them if I could start branching out into

something outside of that that I would actually find interesting and I found social commentary to be my strength and so I they they allowed me after reading my samples. And it turned within a couple of months from a fashion blog into just my sort of hot take on our society. And it grew over the course of eight years and became a real love of mine. But I found that purely by accident. Yeah, I mean, so you're developing a voice, a place to... It's like the BBC is satisfying one particular need for expression. TV before that was satisfying a different need. Writing was satisfying a different need.

It kind of all blended together to create different outlets for different parts of yourself. And you're also gaining a tremendous amount of exposure across the UK then. You become very noticeable. Even though you're primarily on the BBC, you're still very forward-facing and very visually identifiable there. And I know you have shared and you've written about somewhere around the age of 26, which I guess was right around then. You also started to really struggle, described it as having a breakdown and a suicide attempt. What came together in that sort of like season for you that led you to that place? I think a lot of people find as they start to

approach 30, that old trauma that they've buried starts to surface whether or not you like it. I don't know if that's because that's when we really become adults and that's when we're really starting to shape who we're going to become. think it's a ridiculous fallacy the idea that we are adults from 18 onwards no one knows shit at 18 or 20 or 25 even I really think it's only as you start to approach your 30s that you start to understand who you are what your place in the world is and what you plan to do going onwards. So all of my old shit that I'd always buried under jokes and performative sort of playfulness, suddenly I couldn't hide from anymore. And so the combination of that and being way too famous for someone who's so

introverted and someone who is not built for fame because I'm an unfiltered and unusual woman. I think having paparazzi outside my house all day, every day, photographing me, speculating over my weight, speculating over my love life, speculating over my existence, stalking me on every single walk I would go to, having all these bizarre narratives constructed around who I am and what I stand for by the media it all just sort of melted me down the combination of actual mental illness that I've been running from my entire life and the media giving me no it's not the media but society giving me no space to grow because once you're in the public eye you become held kind of accountable as if you are some sort of perfect omniscient saint and so I just cracked I guess at 26 and

had a full-on explosive nervous breakdown that no one else saw publicly because I didn't leave my house other than to run into a cab and go and do my radio show and come back but my whole life fell apart and it's you know I also wasn't very well physically at the time. And I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is a very painful and relentless condition that you're born with. And it only degenerates with age. And so when you wake up in pain every single day and you go to bed every night in pain, and none of your organs work properly because it affects every single cell in your body. And you're swollen all the time at really unpredictable, inconvenient moments for a job that is very much so forward facing and where you're in the spotlight and being scrutinized for how you look. You just sometimes can't take it anymore.

And so I gave up. But thankfully, I failed. And suicide was not something I turned out to have a talent for. I attempted it twice in my life and not been successful both times. And so I decided that if I'm going to carry on in this world, then I'm going to have to address everything that has led me to this point of collapse and go through it meticulously and study my trauma and understand my patterns and map my way out of what was essentially insanity and so that's what the last kind of eight years of my life has been just an experiment where I've used myself as a crash test dummy to try anything other than hard drugs and anal that

will help me figure out who I actually am when I'm not trying to be who society wants me to be. That's my hyper rebellious behavior in the last couple of years. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting having that frame because it's almost like a lot of what is happening publicly is the outward expression of your own inner quest to figure out who exactly am I, if not defined by the expectations and the frames of everybody who exists outside of me. Yeah. And the patriarchy, you know, who am I really? You know, if you think about how early we start being conditioned, it would have been the first time I turned on television and saw a Disney princess. I was being, and you know, my own family and my lineage and where the place that I come from means that, you know, we have a very specific coding for women's behavior so I've been soaked in conditioning from as early as I could understand and so how are women in particular or just those of us who are very controlled how are we ever

supposed to work out who we really are when we're so busy being bombarded with who we're supposed to be and I guess that's what happened to me at 26 was that sort of that light bulb moment of I have no idea who I am I'm'm lost. And that's why I feel so able to dispose of my life because I don't care about this life because I don't know this person. So I can easily execute them because they don't mean anything to me. Because how can anyone who you don't know really mean something to you truly? Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it makes absolute sense. And at the same time, I don't want to gloss over the fact that you shared that

with Ehlers-Danlos, there's chronic pain. I mean, it affects different people in different ways. If it shows up for you in your life as pain, that's always there, as dysfunction, where you never quite know how things are going to be on any given day you know waking up and then functioning in a very public way means masking that which means at some point like when whenever we repress something like that whether it's emotional or physical pain it comes out you know some way shape or form oftentimes by illness oftentimes through at some point it needs to find a way out um so it's sort of like if you're covering it if you're sort of like keeping it at bay on an everyday basis at some point it's really gonna it's going to show up whether it's

that or whether it's just all the other things that pile in to create it also put me in a really interesting trap because in this industry you have to sign insurance forms when you work so you cover up your health problems at all costs like you no matter what you're doing you're wearing the heels even though your ankles are on the verge of dislocating or something and they're swollen and they're hurting and your feet are swelling like you people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome don't do very well in in very cold conditions especially when our joints are affected but you wear the mini skirt in the freezing cold, you wear all the makeup, you look like the picture of health, you present as the picture of health, because otherwise you're going to lose work as our industry and our society is so fundamentally ableist. So that means that later when you come

out and finally open up about all these things that you've struggled with, because you looked fine all along and presented as very able-bodied people doubt your story and they doubt your integrity because also we don't understand the concept of invisible disability and invisible illness and chronic illness is that if you cannot see someone's leg literally severed off essentially then you don't believe what is wrong with them we have a similar attitude towards mental health if If somebody looks fine, we presume they are fine. We don't ever look, we've never been taught to look beneath the surface. So yeah, that was, it was a, it's been an interesting journey for me with my health. Yeah. It's almost like, you know, you work so hard to project an image of strength.

And when you finally say, you know, I just, this needs to come out, that actually works against you in this really bizarre way. Yeah. I've just been accused of having munchausens, like publicly, en masse. So, which is so hilarious and ridiculous. And the person who did it is just some sort of washed up journalist, not a doctor, not one of my doctors. And I can't believe I had to defend and that my boyfriend who cares for me had to defend my integrity to the public based on someone's random accusation.

But I guess that it highlighted an inherent ableism in our society. It's very interesting to see how quickly people jumped on that I think there's also some inherent like misogyny in there where it's like a woman must be hysterical and must be lying and must be dishonest and manipulative but it yeah it's it it's very strange to be sick and in pain for a large portion of your life and then to be sort of globally gaslit over it after surviving so long against your will like not not wanting to survive. Both times I've tried to commit suicide were massively due to, of course, mental illness, but also just an inability to cope with being chronically sick. So that was very strange when that happened recently. I can't even imagine. I guess around 2016-ish, which was as you're sort of emerging from that particular window,

you have a cancer scare. That, knock on wood, ends up being okay and yet required some surgery. And part of the promise you made to yourself is that if this comes out okay, you're basically on a plane away from London to the US where you land in LA. Yeah. I was so grateful that I was fine. I was so grateful to be okay because I have a lot of cancer in my family and we lost a lot of women in my family to cancer. And so I was so, so scared that I'd been wasting my life. And as much as it wouldn't seem like I was wasting my life because obviously I was living this incredibly glamorous existence on television and getting to meet you know Tom Hanks and all these different people um I wasn't happy I didn't feel fulfilled and I was very

pigeonholed back in England and I love England for so many reasons and I thank the British television industry and radio industry forever for having given me the lessons and the opportunities that I had but as a woman you are certainly stereotyped more so in England than I would say in America you know you're not likely to have much of a career after 30 traditionally and you have to maintain a very youthful very thin appearance and you know if you are a TV presenter then you stay only being a TV presenter you can never go into acting or comedy and and you know you should be quiet and stay in your lane and not be and not ever push back against the very controlling patriarchal british media and so you know i i was boxed in and finding out that i could have lost my life really gave me this much

needed boost to be like okay i'm fine'm fine. So now in case the next time this happens, I'm not fine. I'm going to go and, and, you know, grab life by both of its balls and just see what happens, have an adventure. Give myself something to look back on on my deathbed. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk.

So you end up in LA, but not to be in front of a screen, which is why so many people end up going to LA, but actually to be on the other side of it. Like you show up in LA to write. Yeah. And that becomes the focus for a while. And yet, not too far into your stint in la you do end up on the other side of the screen and once again just as we shared you know like you sort of like showed up on tv and then showed up at the bbc without having any experience you effectively the legend has it the story behind you know the audition for uh the good place is say it's almost the same type of thing like never acted before given this opportunity for a show with people who you were watching you know that year when you're

17 yeah these are like some of the most iconic people um on tv who had been there for a generation or two to say hey can i step on set and play a major role in the show i really, I begged Mike Schur to reconsider when he gave me the role because I told him I didn't know what I was doing. And he just had decided for me that I did. And I think he'd been similar with Aubrey Plaza, you know, where she wasn't necessarily an aspiring actor when he found her. But Mike knows what he wants in a way that I find so admirable and he doesn't really listen to anyone else he's a complete rebel in this industry and so you know he cast four unknowns uh into an ensemble comedy and created a show unlike anything we've ever seen it was so high concept and yet it was made for mainstream network and he taught an entire generation so much with a spoonful of sugar it

was all these lessons about morality and philosophy just sort of wrapped in dick and fart jokes. I think that that was just I can't believe I got to be a part of that. And I, you know, similarly to my first ever TV audition, I just thought there's no there's no fucking way Mike Schur is going to give me a part in this I've been forced to be here by my managers who basically just don't have very many South Asians to send to this audition that is for an overly tall South Asian English woman who's a bit of an arsehole which basically is me and uh and so you know I'd been pushed towards that audition was a little bit curious about what the experience would be like thought it would make for a funny column because I was still a writer, I was still a columnist for England, thought I could tell them about how I fucked up an audition in front of Mike Schur, and then by complete accident I got it, and now I can say I've spent four years studying Ted Danson face to face.

I mean, beyond being on set with that crew, a couple of friends have certainly been around and that space, the reputation, the word about that set, about that crew was it was unusually kind. There was a lot of dignity on set. I'm curious whether that was your experience. Yes, it was just an incredible place to work and it was very, very surreal to be on a set like that, where you had 5050 male and female directors, male and female writers, and you had all these different, different people from different backgrounds, it felt like a very multicultural space, where you felt like you could see yourself when you would look out into the crew, and people who were like you. And yet, while I was doing it was 2016, I think we began the Me Too and the Time were like you. And yet while I was doing it, it was 2016, I think we began, the Me Too and the Time's Up movement were starting to emerge and kick off. And so I was reading these horror stories about Hollywood and these pervasive and insidious, disgusting environments that women in particular were having to navigate

just to survive in this industry. And yet here I was with this comparative saint of a man Women in particular were having to navigate just to survive in this industry. And yet here I was with this comparative saint of a man who really pushed for the women to feel empowered and intellectually stimulated by their characters. And he wrote nuanced, complex, interesting roles for minorities that never centered our minority as our entire storyline. He just broke every single rule and was so kind and supportive and paid us all equally. And I couldn't relate to anything I was reading. I felt so grateful. It did just fundamentally change my life. It changed my life in every single way.

It gave me faith in myself. It gave me faith in this industry. It gave me faith that there were good allies out there like Mike Schur. And I was given this platform from that show on top of just being a part of something that I really believed in. It then allowed me to have the platform to start a movement that represented what I believed in right to the fiber of my being. And so it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I'd probably say that show in every way. Yeah. Tell me about the movement side of things because so you're heading into sort of, I guess it was probably the last season of

The Good Place, 2018 as you start an Instagram account, I Weigh, which ostensibly, and it's funny because I've heard it described in the past as body positivity, but it's really not that. And it never was. But it feels like, I'm curious, because it feels like it has grown and expanded and the mission behind it has grown and expanded substantially, even just in the short amount of time that it's been there. And it's no longer just an Instagram account. This is a true movement. Yeah.

Well, look, it has the reputation of being a body positive movement because the you know the media are more prone to if they're going to have this conversation at all having it with a slender conventionally attractive woman so that they can have the conversation but put her on the covers where she can fit into the couture clothing and sample sizes and so it's just a very convenient way i'm still thrilled that they had the conversation with me and this conversation was able to become mainstream because of that and and still thrilled that they had the conversation with me and this conversation was able to become mainstream because of that. And I love that they were willing to go there and have real conversations with me

and not just reduce me down to conversations about my hair and my love life. But it was very tricky because I was therefore not intending to, but was taking up space in the body positive movement, which if people don't understand body positivity is a socio-political movement that is for women who are of a size where they are discriminated against by employers by doctors and they experience consistent mass abuse

over their size and and discrimination on all fronts uh especially also in dating so the body positivity movement is there to teach women how to love bodies that the world actively hates and it is something that is for larger women slender people have you know commercialism has co-opted the body positive movement as something that is for slender women who do yoga and have abs who love their abs and say i'm hashtag body positive and look I understand that you know there aren't completely malicious intentions behind that but it's erased this very important socio-political movement slender women don't need body positivity but we definitely still

have the right to say that we struggle with our body image I certainly do so I practice body neutrality and that's kind of what a lot of iWeigh is it's looking outside of your body it's treating your body as nothing other than a vessel that carries your mind and looking at who you are on the inside so uh the reason the movement is called iWeigh is that we weigh ourselves not on a weighing scale in numbers but we weigh ourselves based on the sum of all of our parts so iWeigh my relationship my financial independence the lessons i've had to learn publicly, the eating disorder I've overcome, all these different things. I weigh my activism, everything. I weigh the sum of all of my motherfucking parts and I'm tired of being reduced to nothing more than inches and pounds and kilos. So it started as a statement against

how we are made to feel as our bodies, but very quickly it emerged into what was generally a conversation about acceptance representation and mental health and that's where we are at today we have a million followers on instagram and we have changed a global policy on instagram and facebook that protects people under the age of 18 from diet and detox products and cosmetic surgery procedures that are being sold to them that aren't regulated and being peddled by influencers who have zero morals. And we are also working on several bills in the United States to try to protect teenagers and end discrimination. So it's a full thing.

Yeah. I mean, it's also fascinating if you look at the Instagram account, which is really just, you know, this is one small visual representation of what's going on behind the scenes. It's also, it's a platform not, you know, it's a platform to tell so many people's different stories and you see, you know, the, the, the images, the, and, and, and people saying like, you know, if you want to say that this is how, you know, like you want to weigh me, let me tell you how much vaster the universe of things that comprise the value I contribute to the world are at this moment and how much they will become over time. And it's this really powerful visual depiction of people proclaiming publicly. Reclaiming almost.

They're reclaiming their identity. Yeah. Which is, it's just incredibly powerful to, no matter who you are, you just sit there and you start to move through it and it's emotional. I think it really moves you. I think that you have to have a pretty cold heart to sort of look at this and say, A, you know, like change doesn't need to happen, and B, that anybody should be boxed in by a set of societal identifiers that tell you what smart is, what stupid is,

what beautiful is, what not, or how anyone should behave on the planet. Yeah. I think it was just important for us all to take back the ownership of, we're living this incredibly narrow- minded society where only thin is beautiful only young is beautiful only able-bodied is beautiful only light-skinned is beautiful only good clear skin is beautiful like just we've been so the majority the vast majority of society has been excluded from what is deemed societally acceptable that just doesn't make sense it's just bad business it's bad business to choose this I mean it's it was very clever business to choose this completely unattainable ideal and use it as a way to say that anything outside of this

is unacceptable therefore you must buy all of these products to fix you yourself because you are broken and so you know that's the marketing strategy that has existed for 30 or 40 years now and it does work but I reject it and I think that people are very smart they just haven't been woken up to the correct information you just have to help them identify the evil and then they can make their own better decisions and we're not taught about this stuff in school we're not taught about it by our parents we're never warned we're never educated on proper media literacy how to understand the actual messaging of advertising. And so therefore, as someone who does now understand that and who's in the middle, in

the belly of the beast, I have the really rare position to be able to, with authority from the inside, blow the whole thing wide open, which is quite fun. Fun and powerful. I mean, it's an interesting moment as we're having this conversation for you, right? Because good place winds down. This is kicking up in a really good, big way. The world is going through

some really big disruption and pain. When you think about the state that we're in right now and what role you want to play, your contribution sort of moving forward, what's really calling you right now? Is it I-way? Is it something different or something new? Is that a piece of a bigger puzzle? No, it's I-way. It's I-way. We've turned it into this giant movement. We have a lot of laws to change. Laws take a very long time. And also the conversation of mental health, to be able to destigmatize it and demystify it

from the unique position of someone who's come back from the absolute brink I feel as though I you know I'm not an expert in anything other than my own survival and I can use those techniques that I've learned to perhaps inspire someone to find their own techniques I'm not here trying to treat anyone I'm not you know one of those strange tv doctors uh but I I definitely feel as though I know I think I know what I'm doing now and it's taken a bit of growth and learning and space and time but this is where I want to be I have so much to learn from our society and I think they could learn a lot from all the stuff I know about all the lies of the media and and so I just want to work with my community on that and that's what

the podcast is we're launching a YouTube channel in a couple of weeks it's also going to be around the concept of social justice and social education about things to do with social justice and you know if I if I continue to persist with entertainment then it just has to be roles that I think are actually furthering a conversation of some sort I'm not I don't want to be famous I don't want to be a sex symbol I don't want to be glorified for anything that I find empty. I want to make a difference, not because I care about my legacy, because I don't give a fuck, which we can tell from my Twitter being such a mess. But I definitely care about undoing some of the pain that I was caused when I was young, because of how toxic this industry is, and how much I looked up to it and how much I thought all of it was real.

And I just want to recycle, selfishly, I'd like to recycle my pain into something good. It's kind of interesting also seeing you, you mentioned I Weigh, video channel coming soon, the podcast launched as we have this conversation, I guess about a month or so ago. Yeah. So you're now also,

this interesting full circle moment, right? Because you're back behind the mic, You're back in this different mode. But instead of announcing a totally different topic, you're now having these very personal conversations with people who either have big spotlights and big voices and experiences that they want to share or are in a role where you can share your spotlight to sort of shine it on the good work of other people. Curious what it's been like for you to be sort of, to a certain extent, back in that space in that mode. I'm much more comfortable asking and not speaking. I know, to respect to you, you are lovely, but I hate being interviewed. So I much prefer finding out about others. But, you know, I had to

somewhat overexpose myself and be attention seeking in order to get to this position of power, where now I can pass the mic. And so, you know, that's what I was doing when I was hoovering up a fair amount of attention. It was because I was very deliberately on the path to where I'm at now where I no longer have to speak and I can ask and so it's been brilliant and I love interviewing and I think because I'm such an open book it kind of affords my guests whoever they are a space to do the same and that created some unexpectedly very very frank conversations that Reese Witherspoon ended up crying at the end of the podcast episode on air about her frustrations about sexism and misogyny in this industry and you know Demi Lovato opened

up to me about so many of her mental health issues the same thing with Billy Porter whose episode is about to air soon just phenomenal childhood story of pain and suffering and abuse and trauma and what he has turned that into and how he's done that and for him to be so generous as to take me through a step-by-step guide to wellness and happiness and sustainability I'm just I'm really floored by how well it's gone so far and I feel very honored to be a part of these conversations and and also the you know interviewers tend to stitch people up especially in print media and so these and you know and even in video interviews sometimes they're taken out of context and heavily edited in a way that is deeply unflattering and provocative and unfair in order to frame them in a narrative that suits

the media to create as much outrage as possible because outrage is what sells it used to be sex sex is out outrage sells we hyperinflated the value of sex by putting it absolutely everywhere so it's no longer something that is considered valuable now it's outrage and so i'm really proud to have created this space lately for people who have something very important and valuable to say to be allowed to come and say it in context with protection and with my best interests at heart I'm not looking to stitch anyone up I'm just looking to have the most helpful conversation which I think is something that journalists no longer carry en masse

very few journalists still are interested in the bigger more interesting and helpful conversation they just have to succumb to what gets the most clicks and so because of that interviews have lost their their impact I think in a lot of print media and a lot of people are afraid even to do podcasts because they have no control over how they're edited and so I think because I'm on the same side as them now people speak to me with much more trust than they used to when I was just a journalist now that I'm also an actor who's also being subjected to intense scrutiny and gaslighting I think it feels like it just it's a very unique position that I'm in I have unique access to such extraordinary people scientists and doctors as well as actors and artists and and so hopefully we will continue to in this moment where people

most need to talk about their mental health because they're locked inside or they're losing loved ones and they're under so much stress they're losing their jobs they have no idea how they're going to feed their families or if they're going to be homeless soon if we can provide any semblance of comfort and entertainment and a message of the fact that you are not alone and what you're struggling and you mustn't feel ashamed of what you're going through, then I will have done my job. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So as we sit here in this cross country container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes out? To live a good life is truly just to be happy. I've really learned that over the course of my

twenties. And I know that's devastatingly cheesy, but mental health is my priority. Now that is the path to a good life. It's not money. It's not fame. It's not success. It's not designer things. I've had all of that now. I've had everything shiny and it led me to almost taking my own life because of how empty and worthless it really is. And so comfort, of course, comes with privilege. But generally, all of this shit is just so meaningless. And if I may, sorry to be long winded, but I do think I want to make this point that that's one thing I think will come out of this pandemic is that people will no longer

value the bullshit that we have valued up until now. We have been taught to worship commercialism and worship consumerism and expensive hotels and diamonds and pointlessly expensive clothes. And I don't think anyone is going to be able to afford that. But B, I think we have finally recognized that the people that we have celebrated in our society have been all of the wrong heroes it's been a bunch of useless fucking celebrities who have proven to be so ultimately useless in this moment apart from maybe three of them and we are recognizing that the heroes were the people that we ignored all along and so I am only excited for that one outcome of this global tragedy. I'm hoping that we will restore helpful and intelligent values and recognize what is good. And I hope that we will all be able to make it out of this moment alive and with respect for our mental health, because that's the strongest tool you have in this moment.

It's the only thing you can possibly have control over somewhat if you're lucky. And so for me, mental health is to live a good life, is to be happy and to be cuddled, really. I like spooning. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of

course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

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charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. will vary.