“As someone whose life is just a series of mortifying incidents strung together, it’s going to be brilliant to take a break from my own mishaps, and feast in the disasters of others,” Jameela Jamil said when The Misery Index first began. “…this show is brilliantly ridiculous.”
For the last two years, the experienced host, showrunner, and comedy actress has hosted TBS’ The Misery Index. The comedy gameshow allows contestants to exploit their misfortune for a chance to win some money. The show recently announced its upcoming third season, with Jamil back onstage as host alongside the stars of Impractical Jokers.
Jameela Jamil began as a TV and radio host
Jamil began her career as a television show and radio host on British media channels T4 and BBC Radio 1. In 2016, Jamil moved to the United States, where she starred in NBC’s The Good Place. She also added two more hosting positions to her resumé with The Misery Index and Legendary.
But before her time as a media star, Jamil worked as an English teacher. In fact, she became an actress by accident. After moving to LA, Jamil heard that the creator of Parks and Recreation Michael Schur was looking for a British actress for a new show. An audition and a fib about having comedy improv and theatre experience earned her her first acting role as Tahani Al-Jamil in The Good Place.
“There are religious themes in our show, and moral philosophy,” Jamil says. “It doesn’t make it sound like a great comedy when you frame it around the idea of moral philosophy, but it’s the spoon full of sugar that helps the medicine go down.”
The Good Place wrapped up after four successful seasons in 2020 and has been nominated for many prestigious awards, including 14 Primetime Emmy Awards.
Jameela Jamil is an outspoken activist
Beyond her acting work, Jamil uses her platform to speak out on a range of issues. She has worked to advance multiple causes, including LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and chronic illness awareness.
In 2018, she founded I Weigh, “an allyship platform built to share ideas and stories that ultimately mobilize activism.” The organization works towards advancing policies that limit diet and detox products shown to minors on social media.
- Here, Jamil criticizes laxatives marketed as “detox” and “diet” products.
Jamil herself has been through a lot, as a recovering anorexic and chronically ill person. She confirmed in 2019 that she has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. This disorder leads to easy bruising and scarring, among other things. As a result, she speaks from personal experience about the dangers of influencer culture. This also includes the diet industry, and unreasonable expectations of “beauty” in the media.
“I have tonnes of stretch marks, and because I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, *every* time I cut, I scar,” she writes. “I *refuse* to have these normal human marks weaponized against me.”
The Misery Index: “dry and goofy” yet “boisterous”
The Misery Index is a comedy show in which two teams, each featuring two members of “Impractical Jokers”, tell real-life stories which are rated from 1-100 on “The Misery Index”.
The real misery index is used to rate a country’s economic well-being. But on the show, a team of psychologists actually developed the index they use. The psychologists present in each episode rank the stories based on “three pillars of misery” – physical pain, emotional trauma, and long-term psychological impact. If the contestants’ rankings match the psychologists’, they win monetary prizes.
Featuring Joe Gatto, James “Murr” Murray, Brian “Q” Quinn, and Sal Vulcano alongside host Jameela Jamil, the show premiered its second season on TBS this October. Soon it will shoot a third season. The show has been described as a combination of The Good Place’s “dry but goofy tone” and the “boisterous New Yawk tone” of the rest of the permanent cast.
Stream both seasons of The Misery Index on Amazon,.
