The Good Place star Jameela Jamil has revealed she was physically beaten and bullied as teenager for being South Asian and struggled with body image as a "chubby teenager" in an interview with Huffington Post.
The British actress, who has been a outspoken about body positivity with her project I Weigh and vocal about gender and racial representation in Hollywood, says her advocacy around social justice issues was inspired by her own experiences of racism growing up South Asian in Britain.
"I think I was a teenager when I first started to really get angry about injustice, because I think in my life I faced so much direct injustice and racism and bullying and classism. I came from a poor family and a broken home," she told Huffington Post in an interview.
Jamil, best known for her breakout role as Tahani Al-Jameel in the Netflix comedy hit The Good Place says after her parents split when she was a child, a car accident broke her back forcing her into a wheelchair as a young woman and paving the way for a difficult adolescence plagued with disability and abuse.
I was bullied about appearance, but I was mostly bullied for my race as a child, and very violently
"I was Pakistani in a country that really wasn’t very kind to Pakistani people...I was physically and verbally [abused] very badly at school. Like beaten senseless by kids for being from a Pakistani family and for being poor. That was before the age of 10, and that went on until I was about 16. Most of my school years I was bullied very badly because of my race and also because of my weight," she said.
"I was very chubby on and off at school. I didn’t look like the other girls. I was much taller than everyone else. I had bad skin, and braces. I was bullied about appearance, but I was mostly bullied for my race as a child, and very violently."
Jamil's experiences have given her a fearlessness that is in contrast to the carefully scripted public image of other celebrities. She has a vocal Twitter presence, calling out Kim Kardashian for being “toxic influence on young girls” for promoting appetite-suppressing lollipops, and has spoken out about the hiring of actor Emile Hirsch by director Quentin Tarantino, after he was sentenced to 15 days in prison for choking a woman. She is also the author of Diary of Goon blog where she riffs about popular culture, #MeToo, her disdain for airbrushing, and being a minority actress in Hollywood.
I wanted to just be part of the solution
"I wanted to change whatever I could so that one day I would bring children into a different world. I wanted to just be part of the solution, "she said.
But it has not been without cost. Jamil says racist abuse followed her even as a celebrity actress, both on the street and online, most pronounced after an interview on Britain's Channel 4 with Krishnan Guru-Murthy.
"We got messages like, “That room must have been stinking with those two Pakis in the room,” she said.
"Those are the kinds of messages I receive on a daily basis. And that’s this year. If you think about how far we should have come by now, for people to still be making comments and jokes like that. And people talking about my “monkey face.” I get a lot of that on social media over the years."
