8 Questions for... Jameela Jamil

A Low Desire To Please with Jameela Jamil

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Jameela Jamil

is a comedic actor, a writer, a podcaster, a TV host, a documentary maker and an advocate within the world of social justice, and a massive goon. Her main interest is how we could find sustainable happiness and understand ourselves and each other better.

A Low Desire to Please with

Jameela Jamil

is a very varied insight into her brain. There will be essays, Q&A’s, videos, meet ups, livestreams and dog content, as well as parts of her that she feels safer sharing on here than she does on Social Media. She feels as though the “Benefit of the Doubt” still exists on Substack, and so she’s joined in the hopes that she can find people who want to talk, not just shout.

Her publicist doesn’t know about this page.

1.     Why Substack?

I need a break from the hysteria and callousness of other media platforms. I miss people. I miss debate. I miss grey areas. I miss vulnerability not having to be packaged within something performative and snappy. This platform feels raw, it feels sloppy, there is an anarchy to Substack, that threatens the perfectionism bred by other platforms. I was a journalist and columnist throughout my twenties, and stepped away when I became an actor, because I had started to feel more liberated on social media platforms. This was a time before the algorithms and bots had our timelines in such a chokehold, when there was a true democracy to it all. It felt fun, connective and risky. We had a saner understanding of what it was, it all felt separate from the real world that we live in. We were in on the joke. Somewhere along the way, especially post pandemic, the apps not only blended with our real world, but in a way it feels like they have started to take over. It has informed the way we talk to each other in person, even with the people we love and trust the most. It has blurred the lines on where we stand on basic humanity. It has encouraged knee-jerk reactions and increased our appetite for immediacy in all areas of our life. Substack feels like the good old days. It feels insular, intimate and exclusive to people who actually care, who are actually invested, where my secrets feel kept and protected by my audience. I am aware that this may be hugely naive of me, but one can dream.

2.     How long did it take you to find your groove?

I’m only three essays in, so I’m afraid I’m likely very far from my groove. The groove is a mere dot to me.

3.     How has it changed you?

As a reader, it has resurfaced my more thoughtful side, and perhaps more importantly my rebellious side. It is inspiring to watch people write so un-defensively. I perhaps have been spared having to tolerate any especially sanctimonious or pretentious voices on here, I’m sure they exist. The essays I read have largely been by women who are confessing to the darkest and most contradictory parts of themselves. I consider that an act of resistance against the lure towards obedience online. As a writer, I’m still finding my feet, but I feel worryingly safe to be extremely silly in ways I don’t feel safe to, because people seek to misunderstand each other online, whereas here it currently feels quite the opposite.

4.     What mistakes have you made?

I keep fucking publishing my essays without checking them over first. I keep forgetting that when I hit “post” that it goes out to people’s emails and cannot be edited. I write each essay in one go. It’s a pure train of thought. I long to be someone with the capacity to step away and return, but I lose momentum on ideas. I only write when I’m bursting. This is an exciting and consuming way to work, but it doesn’t mean I can post it to thousands of people without reading it back first.

5.     To pay or not to pay?

Writing is work. Writing is art. Writing is time. Writing is risk. I make some of my work free in order to offer a sample of what I provide, but ultimately I am putting myself out there, naked, in thoughtful long form. I require some compensation. Especially because it’s really only a matter of time before one of my candid essays gets me cancelled. So I’m building a little retirement fund for a disobedient liberal.

6.     What artistic and technical choices have you made?

I am not making any choices other than to offer whoever and whatever I think in the moment I am writing. I oscillate between different parts of myself, and I’m not trying to curate any sort of “brand” on here. I have deep seriousness and silliness within, that I don’t wish to curtail in the name of consistency.

7.     What’s been the effect on your writing?

The effect on my writing has simply been liberation. I’m not writing to impress anyone, to make anyone like me, I’m not trying to be relatable. I’m disobedient, open, blunt, and provocative. Most importantly I am not writing defensively. A curse of too much time spent on social media, with the increasingly obscene demand for moral and behavioural perfection. In 2022, I regretfully gave a lucrative book deal back, because as I was reading back my work I realized that my self-explanatory, pandering, relentless caveats made it exhausting to write and to read. I have spent the time since clawing myself out of the habit of shadow-boxing. We are becoming a world that seeks to misunderstand one another. Substack currently feels like the opposite.

8.     In it for the long haul?

I’m in it until it stops being fun. Growth makes these platforms unpredictable. I am a fan of where it currently is, and hope that the twats of this world, remain too lazy to invest in the people they wish to harass and interrupt!

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