Jameela Jamil is opening up about her struggles before landing her first acting role.
The 39-year-old actress was a TV presenter and radio show host in the UK before moving to Los Angeles with a plan to work as a screenwriter.
However, her agents told her an upcoming comedy series was looking for a British actress and she auditioned, eventually landing the role in The Good Place, which premiered in 2016.
In a new podcast interview, Jameela revealed how little she had in her bank account before landing that role.
Keep reading to find out more…
“I just didn’t want to be on TV anymore ever again, and I wanted to be a writer and a DJ, and so I just f—ed off,” she recalled on David Tennant Does a Podcast With…
The actress explained how she joined her then boyfriend on tour.
“And then I ran out of money and so I said, ‘Please can I have a job, any job, I will do anything,” she said, adding, “I was so desperate for money at that point. I had $17 left in my bank account… I was real keen.”
“But instead I was handed a bunch of auditions,” despite having “never acted before and just thought that was a sacrilege.”
She told host David Tennant that she did have a script written that she pitched, which is what prompted executives to tell her to audition for The Good Place.
“They were the ones who said, ‘We want you to go to this audition for Mike Schur. You’ll have more power as a writer if you have a name for yourself, or you can just meet him and maybe he’ll put you in the writer’s room,’” she said.
“So I went to the audition, just very much so not thinking anything was going to come of it,” Jameela shared. “I got both the magic show and Mike Schur and I had to make a choice. You weren’t allowed to do both.”
She concluded she “got pushed towards doing The Good Place.”
Jameela will be heard this summer in the upcoming new Pixar movie Elio. Watch the latest trailer here!
She is also set to star in a new TV series titled Hysterical, and in two upcoming Netflix movies – A Merry Little Ex-Mas rom-com and People We Meet On Vacation, based on the Emily Henry novel of the same name.
