Woman Crush Wednesday: Jameela Jamil Never Acted Before ‘The Good Place’

Happy hump day, people! Guess what is going to help you get through this week? That’s right, it’s Woman Crush Wednesday! This week’s feature is all about a bad-ass woman who has not only taken the entertainment world by storm, but also just shook up Silicon Valley. Here she is: Jameela Jamil!

WHO’S THAT GAL: Jameela Jamil

WHY WE’RE CRUSHING: Jamil is relatively new to Hollywood. In fact, when moving from London to Los Angeles in 2016 at the age of 29, she had intended to pursue writing and further her radio career. But when her agent passed along news that a hot director was looking for a British actress for his new show, Jamil, who had no prior acting experience, auditioned for the part. As a result, she is now one of the major players in Michael Schur’s hit sitcom The Good Place, which is entering its forth and final season on NBC on Thursday, September 26. For those that don’t know, The Good Place centers around Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), an often unconscionable young woman who, after dying, finds she’s made it into a heaven-like utopia, “The Good Place.” But soon after meeting the community’s architect, Michael (Ted Danson), Eleanor realizes she’s been placed there by mistake.

On The Good Place, Jamil plays narcissistic, British socialite Tahani al-Jamil, another member of “The Good Place” community. Essentially, her role includes name-dropping various celebrities, from the Spice Girls to the Dalai Lama, and embodying the word “posh.” Over the past few seasons, however, we’ve watched bit by bit as Tahani became a more vulnerable character, a development that Jamil plays beautifully, while still managing to make us belly laugh every other scene. Honestly, the fact that this is Jamil’s first acting role is shocking enough on paper, but it’s even more preposterous when you sit down and actually watch her. Jamil emits such a confidence that, while she’s claimed to be nothing like her character, Tahani still comes off as an incredibly real person. Jamil’s noted that this is due in large part to her teachers, Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, telling GQ Magazine, “four months filming with them is like four years of drama school.” Still, you have to give it up for Jamil… Talk about a fast learner!

The actress is also incredibly active outside her profession. Over the years, she has been a vocal advocate for body positivity and even began the “I Weigh” movement to push people to celebrate, rather than criticize, their bodies. She is also staunchly against the promotion of beauty and weight loss products that tout unrealistic claims on social media, especially given the effects on young, impressionable girls. Recently, Jamil won a significant victory when Instagram agreed to prohibit teens under eighteen from seeing advertisements related to cosmetic procedures and weight loss products on their site. While Instagram is the first media giant to take this step, Jamil has also called out others like Facebook and Twitter.

WHERE YOU’VE SEEN HER BEFORE: Like we said, Jamil didn’t have much of an acting career prior to The Good Place. Still, she was no stranger to television. Jamil began as a presenter on Britain’s Channel 4 with the teen program T4 in 2009. During this time, she also presented The Closet, a fashion advice show. Then, come 2012, Jamil took over as the host of Playing it Straight, a reality show where one woman tried to discern which men in a group were straight and which were gay. At the end of that year, Jamil made history by becoming the first female presenter of BBC 1 Radio’s The Chart Show.

Since her time on Schur’s show, Jamil has guest-starred on the animated series DuckTales and appeared in the 2019 comedy How to Build a Girl. The actress also briefly hosted a recurring segment on Last Call with Carson Daly called “Wide Awake with Jameela Jamil.” Throughout her career, Jamil has still found ample time for her activism work as well, including launching Why Not People? in 2015, a company dedicated to making entertainment events more accessible to the disabled. She also started a petition to stop celebrities from promoting “toxic diet products” on their social platforms, which, to date, has nearly 250,000 signatures.

WHERE YOU’LL SEE HER AGAIN: Already, Jamil has lined up her next project with Disney, Mira, Royal Detective, an Indian-inspired adventure series about a young girl, Mira (Leela Ladnier), who teams up with a young prince and travels the kingdom solving mysteries. Jamil will play Mira’s Auntie Pushpa. The British star was also tapped by TBS to host their new game show, Misery Index, which is a play on the card game “Shit Happens.” In collaboration with The Tenderloins comedy group, the four stars of truTv’s Impractical Jokers, the game will consist of a non-celebrity and two Tenderloins on each team as they attempt to rank “hilarious and miserable real-life events” on a scale of 1 to 100. If The Good Place is any indication (a.k.a. having 96% on Rotten Tomatoes), Jamil’s next few projects will also come out on top.

Where to stream The Good Place