For the second installment of The Hollywood Reporter‘s “Emerging Hollywood” digital online series, host Charlamagne Tha God sits with actress and activist Jameela Jamil who speaks candidly about her past anorexia, a near-fatal car accident and why she doesn’t subscribe to cancel culture.
“I think I was a very young kid when I realized there was an oppressive beauty standard on me. Also, it was very white. I didn’t see brown or black people in my magazines or my television,” The Good Place actress said. “I was fully anorexic by the time I was 13. I wasn’t menstruating. My body was sort of letting me know I was dying from the inside.”
When the Power 105.1 host inquired about Jamil’s parental supervision, she confessed that most anorexic teens and or adults are clever at hiding their disorder.
“Anorexics are very very skilled and secretive and it’s oftentimes very bright kids who are able to be successful at anorexia. You lie a lot. You wear baggy clothes and no one can explicitly see your bones. You’re not walking around with your bones out all the time…also parents, back then, weren’t educated on eating disorders.”
Jamil also talked about her bucket list, which she dubbed her “f–k it list” which was created after a cancer scare. Her doctor found a lump in her breast and six weeks to the day after her surgery, she purchased a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and accidentally became an actress.
The two then pivoted the 15-minute conversation to feminism and equality, to which Jamil explained she’s a feminist in progress and her definition of feminism “means just wanting equal rights.”
“For me, I want feminism to mean that I am an ally to all women and that includes trans women and I’ve learned over the last year from black women how much black women are left out of feminism and that has taught me that I need to step up and door more to make sure my feminism is more intersectional. So I just think feminism means fighting for the rights of equality for all women.”
Watch Jameela Jamil go more in-depth about equality in Hollywood below.