Jameela Jamil addresses disparaging Laurence Fox remarks: ‘I sounded like an idiot’

TV star and activist Jameela Jamil has expressed regret over disparaging comments she made about the leader of the Reclaim party Laurence Fox.

The 39-year-old actor, known for her role as Tahani in the fantasy comedy series The Good Place, has been a vocal advocate for women’s rights and promoted “radical inclusivity” through her online community, I Weigh.

Back in 2020, Jamil called Fox – who rose to fame as DS James Hathaway in the long-running detective series Lewis – a “freshly w****d cock” in a post shared to X/Twitter.

Fox’s pivot to right-wing activism has caused endless controversy.

In 2024, he was ordered to pay £180,000 in damages after wrongly branding the former RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant Crystal and former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake paedophiles online. In April, he appeared in court after allegedly sharing a compromising photo of Good Morning Britain presenter Narinder Kaur on social media, which he denies.

Speaking to Jordan Stephens, of pop group Rizzle Kicks, at Hay Festival on Wednesday (28 May), Jamil admitted she looks back on the remarks she made about Fox and wishes she’d engaged with him and his followers differently: “I was kind of just being shocking,” she said of her early days of public activism.

“Speaking in that way about someone that I don’t agree with, it just made me look like an idiot. It made me look like I didn’t have something smarter to say. Very immature, attention-seeking, you know? It also made the people that follow him just think I’m a t*** and that I would think the same thing about them.”

Jamil continued: “Those are the people I most seek to open the minds of or bring over to our side to think, ‘Hey, look, I empathise with you, can you empathise with me?’ We can’t expect empathy without being able to give any out and I was speaking in such an emotionally violent way.”

The actor said she had never had her opinions changed by “being shamed” by somebody who doesn’t agree with her politically or ideologically.

“It’s always from being given a little bit of a benefit of the doubt, a bit of grace,” she said. “People have faith in me and I’ve changed. I was a massive misogynist 12 years ago. I was slut shaming everyone I could on the internet. I thought it was hilarious. I had no idea what the patriarchy was.”

She reflected: “If you take that person who now will not shut the f*** up about women’s rights, it shows that I’ve grown…I want to make sure that I extend that hand to other people.”