Jameela Jamil is a British woman of Indian and Pakistani descent, who has lived full time in the US for a decade. She’s probably best known for The Good Place, but she was also a regular on various British shows back when she lived in the UK. I rarely cover her because I find her to be a bit Chrissy Teigen-like – too online, too chaotic and very messy at every level. And much like Teigen, Jameela is friendly with the Duchess of Sussex. Well, Jameela is getting a lot of attention this week for calling British people “the most evil people in history.” Oh…
Stripped of their roles at the Queen Elizabeth II Commonwealth Trust after they quit royal duties, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix series Harry & Meghan aired attacks on the Commonwealth, with one contributor dismissing the voluntary organisation as ‘Empire 2.0’. Another commentator claimed in the 2022 documentary that the Commonwealth had ‘not changed a thing [since colonial days], they just got better PR’.
Now Meghan’s friend Jameela Jamil has gone further, admonishing her fellow Britons in an anti-colonial tirade.
‘Americans think British people are so sweet, which is crazy, because British people are truly the most evil people in history,’ declared the California-based actress, adding: ‘Britain is like Thanos [the genocidal Marvel Comics villain]… we colonised the world.’
Speaking on the US podcast Yestergays, The Good Place star revealed how she ‘butted heads’ with the NBC comedy drama’s director, American Michael Schur, because he wanted to make her wealthy British character Tahani Al-Jamil ‘more likeable’.
She said: ‘I was, like, ‘British people, especially rich British people, aren’t likeable to anyone, they’re horrible, they’re awful’… he went with the passive aggressive b****y version.’
Jameela, 40, attended £32,000-a-year Queen’s College school in London’s Marylebone, whose alumnae include Vogue supremo Anna Wintour and actress Jane Asher. She was a guest on the duchess’s Archetypes podcast in 2022 when she sympathetically told the former Suits actress: ‘It’s an unfathomable amount of s*** that you take, Meghan.’
It’s not the first time that Jameela has criticised her former compatriots. Last year, she explained why she had moved to California like Harry and Meghan.
‘I went over there because I was sick of England,’ she said. ‘[I was sick of] being made to feel at 28 that my time was up, being told to reinvent myself. I’ve never heard of a man being told he needs to reinvent himself in his 20s.’
She added: ‘I’d been told for 17 years that my 15 minutes [of fame] is going to be up soon. At what point are we going to stop panicking women? It’s so preposterous. I was offended by the way I was being treated, so I went to America.’
What’s crazy about the “my time was up at 28” thing is that I’ve always considered the UK film/TV industry much friendlier and more supportive to actresses over a certain age. But there’s an important caveat: white actresses. Many British actors of color have said similar things about why they moved to America to pursue their careers here – it’s because the British industry sets up crazy roadblocks and typecasts people of color. As for British people being “the most evil people in history,” I mean… there are other colonizers out there, it’s not just Britain. But people should remember her background too – my Indian father liked British people (he called it “the old Empire connection”) but he would also say this kind of stuff about them too. The scars of Britain’s imperial days are still felt in many countries to this day.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – JANUARY 06: English actress, writer, presenter, podcaster, and advocate Jameela Jamil arrives at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Netflix’s ‘People We Meet On Vacation’ held at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on January 6, 2026 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 1063942994, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no , Pictured: Jameela Jamil , Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
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- Jameela Jamil at the UK Gala Screening of Elio at Vue West End, London, UK, 15 June 2025.,Image: 1011213792, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no , Credit line: Abdullah Bailey/Avalon
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- HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – JANUARY 06: English actress, writer, presenter, podcaster, and advocate Jameela Jamil arrives at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Netflix’s ‘People We Meet On Vacation’ held at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on January 6, 2026 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 1063943006, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no , Pictured: Jameela Jamil , Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
She is absolutely correct. Nothing In history matches the slaughter and theft of the British empire.
Totally. I saw a video about this recently, and the numbers are truly astonishing.
I wouldn’t let the Ottomans off the hook so easily, but her comments reminded me of a time when after hiking Dartmoor we were soggy and cold. We wanted to eat somewhere dry and warm. But in a very remote area the local inn wouldn’t even let us in with our American accents and unkempt appearance. We had to sneak around back to use the loo.
If not the most evil then who? They made colonization their bread and butter and took it to the next level.
Is she really like Chrissy Teigen? I have never heard a bad word about her. Or about any messiness…? She seems to have really smart takes on misogyny and discrimination.
She’s 100% correct.
No notes.
The British version of colonialism seems to have given PTSD to the native populations they colonized and also their descendants. This article just reminded me of something I’m old enough to remember–the BAFTA awards. From this year!
She’s not wrong. If Richard Eden and others are offended so be it. There’s a black British comedian named London Hughes who moved to the US in 2020 and she says that she will never go back to the UK to live because of how the entertainment industry treats black people.
Yes.
That is all.
In like ALL of history? Because I doubt that. Didn’t some ancient civilizations deal with their enemies by killing all the men, throwing the baby boys off the walls and enslaving all the girls and women? That seems pretty evil.
I get her point but she’s being so hyperbolic it makes it hard to take her seriously.
Yeah, my thoughts first went to Leopold of Belgium but I don’t think she is far off. There have been maybe worse at certain times in history but I think Britain wins for the longest sustained crusade against humanity.
The British did this too. The slave trade atrocities carried out by them would make your stomach turn. Warning warning…. One of the most famous documented is the The Zorg, the slave ship where they made a bunch of navigation errors and wanted to essentially commit insurance fraud so threw over a hundred bound slaves mostly women and children overboard.
The harbors slave ships docked in in Africa were swarming with sharks for obvious reasons. This is brutal…. if any slaves tried to fight back on the ship, they’d be made an example of by being literally chopped to pieces in front of the other slaves.
The British empire was probably the most brutal in human history. Considering it’s competition, that’s saying something. I’d recommend the book “The Zorg”.
Yeah when people make comments like these it screams “I know nothing about world history”.
Of course the British Empire was abhorrent. But calling it the most evil ever is ridiculous especially since the concepts of empire, colonisation and enslavement were invented and heavily practiced thousands of years before Indo-European tribes migrated into the European continent. Historical records alone will tell you of the horrific genocides and enslavement practiced from Assyria, Hittites, Egypt, Athens, Rome, Mongols, Ottoman Empire, all the way to the British, and lets not forget Hitler and his Japanese comrades and their exploits in WW2, continued through to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and finally good old American imperialism throughout the 20th century and beyond, from South America across the Middle East to Southeast Asia. And lets not forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Broaden your horizons Jameela, people of all backgrounds and colors can be horrific to each other on massive scales.
🎯
But, also, a wonderfully supple language.
As a Brit I take no issue with her words; a little hyperbolic sure, but her general point is correct. We colonised and plundered and the ripples of this history are still playing out in every day traumas and poverties.
I also agree, as a British peasant, that our wealthy are the worst. Just look at our Government and the HORROR anytime anyway not blue blooded dares get involved.
Always in awe (in a negative way) of how among all the brutal colonizers, the British empire sanitized its image. Remarkable PR game.
My Irish grandfather never forgave the British for their treatment of the Irish
And my English husband would agree with her about the awfulness of British rich people. He cannot stomach shows like “Downton Abbey” and “The Crown” because they remind him of how the upper classes in England treat people like him, who have the wrong kind of British accents and come from working-class families.
He loves America because Americans think all British accents are posh LOL.
I really like Jameela. She has been outspoken on issues such as body image (she had anorexia as a teen) and mental health and transgender rights. She is, as my English husband would say, a good sort.
I really like her too and I find her hilarious in different roles. Being funny isn’t easy. I agree about the British. I have quoted Roy Wood Jr. before on it being colonizer corporate headquarters. It’s not just scars for people like your husband (and me, frankly), it’s an ongoing foundation underneath every institution from church to state. Optimistically, some changes towards decolonization are happening and at the moment our children are still experiencing harm. Which is obvious I know and I love all the people calling it out and driving change.
If America had the opportunity at the time they would most certainly rival the UK for the most colonial acting country of all…the timing was wrong. But since they couldn’t take the prize yes UK certainly was the king of whiteness and making whiteness in charge of the world for a lot of centuries. It seems like white female actors can work into their nineties in the UK and be named Dames etc…but we don’t really see that with brown women…
By sheer spread and damage, not even close. The US doesn’t even come second to Britain considering the rest of Europe also exists. Most of Central and South America speaks Spanish because of colonialism. Africa has been colonized to hell by Europe and the Arabic empire which also colonized the whole Middle East. A lot of issues in the Middle East exist because of the country borders drawn by the British. That’s not even bring Asia into play. The US isn’t absolved, it’s competition is just too stiff.