“What day is it, Thursday or Friday?” Maya Jama asks.
Friday, I say.
“Perfect,” she says. “End of the week. Time for a drink.”
It’s 3pm. We both settle for a large malbec.
The Love Island presenter can seem forbidding on the dating reality show – 6ft in heels, dressed to the nines, strutting in slo-mo and causing both female and male contestants’ jaws to drop to the floor. But today Jama is dressed-down gorgeous in tracksuit, trainers and a pinch of makeup. At 30, she is where she dreamed of being as a child – a TV regular, Vogue covergirl, and getting paid a fortune for having fun. She has grown up in the public eye, segueing from the teenager who presented the weekly music video countdown on JumpOff.TV and football shows on Copa90 to being star presenter on reality shows about makeup, singing and dating. Now she’s about to make her debut as a judge on the surreal primetime hit The Masked Singer, where celebrities sing in enormous fluffy disguises. Jama will replace Rita Ora on the panel.
Success has been so seamless as to appear inevitable. The reality, though, is it’s been anything but – Jama has overcome numerous hurdles to get where she is today. By the time she made her TV debut, she had survived more trauma than most of us experience in a lifetime.
And yet at the same time, Jama says, she isn’t surprised by her success. As a tot, she was told that she was going to be a TV star. She couldn’t sing, wasn’t an amazing dancer, was a little wooden as an actor. But she has something about her. Call it a gifted personality, in the way that Ant and Dec or her hero Davina McCall have that “X factor”. Jama can talk to anyone; she makes people feel comfortable and happy. She has won audiences over by managing to be both unobtainable and hugely relatable, TV’s cool big sister.
A waiter delivers the wine to the table. We’re in a posh London hotel, where it turns out a large glass of red wine is half the size of a regular small. She looks at it, disappointed.
“We should have gone to a pub. I didn’t have a say in this, otherwise I would have taken you to a pub.”
The problem is, I say, your people said you’d need security if we went to a pub, so we opted for somewhere more upmarket. “Pah,” she says, “it’s just the people behind me that said posh place.” Does she really need security? “I go to quite a lot of pubs and I’m all right. People come over and speak to me, but they’re nice. They probably said it because they didn’t want people to keep coming over and interrupting the interview.”
Danielle, Jama’s publicist and friend, is sitting at the table next to us, also drinking a glass of red. “Cheers Danielle,” Jama says. “Clink clink, motherfucker!” She raises her glass and giggles.
Jama is much more than a presenter these days. So many brands use her face to sell their product – Gordon’s gin, Rimmel, Beauty Works, Dolce and Gabbana. And now we’re beginning to see the emergence of Maya the mogul. “I’m entering my businesswoman era” she says. “Did you know I’m the co-owner of Sproud,” she says proudly. Sproud is Jama’s Swedish plant-based milk company. And then there’s MIJ Masks. “D’you know much about those?” she asks, putting me to the test, then providing the answer before I have time to get embarrassed. “MIJ Masks is my skincare brand.” The face masks are also vegan. “They’re really good, but we’ve taken them off the shelf for a minute because we’re going to relaunch next year secretly in … somewhere. I can’t say. So I’m going more into that world of business. I’m 30 now, I’ve got to start thinking a bit more long term.” She’s not even mentioned that she has teamed up with actor Idris Elba and musician Little Simz to produce Benedict Lombe’s play Shifters in the West End.
Was she always ambitious? “Yeaaaah!” Jama says, as if how could she not be. “I was ambitious. I just knew I was going to be on telly because everyone around me would say, ‘She’s going to be on telly one day’ – my mum’s friends, teachers, anyone we met on the street. They were all like, ‘She’s got something.’ And because I heard it so much, of course I’m going to believe it.”
Did she know anyone who had been on TV? “No!” she says as though it’s another daft question. But it didn’t make any difference. “I had this instilled confidence from everyone else.”
Jama was named after the great American writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou. Her Swedish-Scottish mother, Sadie, was reading her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, when she was pregnant with her. In 2020, Jama named Angelou as her hero for Black History Month, saying that she, like Sadie, taught her never to give up and to focus on the positives. One of her four tattoos says in Arabic: “Love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching.”
Although Jama was born in Bristol, she started school in Sweden, where her younger brother Omar was born. She was fluent in Swedish until the family returned to Bristol and Sadie stopped speaking to her in the language. Nowadays, she says, she can do a brilliant Swedish accent (she’s got a gift for accents), but is not so fluent in the actual language. As for her Somali, that’s restricted to the single sentence: “Come here and sit down.”
Sadie, once an aspiring actor, was only 19 when Jama was born. The presenter refers to her mother as “Sexy Sadie”, and says she’s always been the life of the party. As for her father, he has been in and out of prison throughout his adult life. More in than out. Sadie did all sorts of jobs to keep the family afloat, including cleaning and working in fast-food joints. Jama and her mother have always been incredibly close – more sisters, in some ways, than mother and daughter.
Jama had never known exactly what her dad had been in prison for until 2016, when she made a documentary about fathers who had been jailed and decided to investigate his background. She discovered that most of his convictions were for violence, often prompted by alcohol. On one occasion he was jailed for six years after almost killing a man.
When she was seven, Sadie met Jama’s stepfather, and they moved in together. He also had two children, and they went on to have her youngest brother, who is now 15. At the age of 10, Jama decided to cut her father out of her life. In the documentary, she decides to meet him after not seeing him for a decade and confront him about his failings. She never explains why she stopped seeing him, but we’re left to assume it’s because of his criminality. Has she seen him since? “No,” she says. It’s interesting that your brother kept visiting him while you didn’t, I say. She nods. “Yeah, because I knew a bit more about what was going on because I was older. My dad was not nice to my mum. And Omar didn’t see that. And that was more of a reason for me to stop talking to him.” Did she tell him that was the reason she had stopped seeing him? “No. I just stopped visiting him. My aunties would be like, ‘Do you want to see your dad?’ And I’d be like: ‘No.’”
It’s easy to get the wrong impression, though, she says. So much of her childhood was wonderful. She got on brilliantly with her close and extended family, including her paternal aunts. She went to a local school that specialised in the performing arts, and became all the more determined to break into TV. Was she academic? “I was bottom set for everything. English, science and maths. I was the class clown 100%.” Was she a rebel? “No. I didn’t really rebel because I had a good, honest relationship with my mum, whereas my friends that had strict parents were sneaking out and hiding things.”
When she was 14 or 15, she auditioned for the teen TV drama Skins, and almost got the part. “If I’m really honest with you I didn’t get it because I was too frigid to snog the boy properly. He was going to be my boyfriend in the show, and I was shy. I was just awkward, kissing someone on camera at that age. I was so awkward.” Until she was 16, she says, she was a tomboy. “Nobody believes it unless they see the photos. I was a late bloomer. In terms of my femininity, I was a bit of a ragamuffin. I was always with the boys, I wore loads of loose clothing, didn’t have any boobs, wasn’t called sexy ever in my life. I was like, ‘Maya’s got a great personality, but she’s not hot’ throughout school. Then I developed, and it was like ‘Oh look, she’s saucy now!’”
Did boys start to treat her differently? “I always used to say that if I fancied a boy I’ve got to talk to them for ages for them to fancy me cos they’re not going to fancy me for how I look. I’ve got to make them love my personality. And then I noticed, I don’t really need to speak and they fancy me now.”
At 16, she experienced a life-defining love and loss. She started dating her first proper boyfriend, Rico Gordon. He was four years her senior, and they had an immediate bond, not least because of their lineage. “He was half Swedish, half Jamaican, I was half Swedish, half Somali, and we got on instantly. He was my first love.” They had been dating for six months when Rico, who had hoped to be a teacher, was caught in the crossfire of a shootout between members of rival gangs. “There was an argument between two people he had nothing to do with. They started shooting at each other and he was down the road on the phone to me, and a bullet hit the floor and hit him.” Rico was killed.
It completely upended her life. “I don’t think you ever really get over something like that. You just learn to deal with it better. I don’t think you’re ever going to wake up if you lose someone you love and go, ‘I’m healed.’ It’s more like with time it gets easier to process, easier to speak about, easier to deal with.”
She had been planning to move to London to go to college and pursue a career in TV. “I left Bristol the day he passed away to be with his family and stayed at his house with his mum.” Is she still in touch with Rico’s family? Her face lights up. “Yes, I’m super close with his family. I took his younger brother and my brother and all my friends to Ibiza this summer for my 30th birthday.”
Before long, she realised she couldn’t stay with Rico’s family for ever. Jama had an older contact in London, whom she moved in with. It was only then that she discovered they struggled with addiction. “They’d also had a boyfriend who had died when they were younger, and we were super close. So I knew I was safe there in that they would never harm me.” The environment, however, was anything but safe. “I lived there for two years, but there was no gas, no electrics. It was not really an appropriate place for me to live. I was around a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have been around as a teenager.” Did she take drugs then? “No I didn’t.” She laughs, unexpectedly. “This is another thing. I could have been a crackhead, and that never happened!”
Time for another drink. Jama insists on getting this round. Blimey, you’ve been through some shit, I say. “Yeah, I’ve had a couple of situations! It’s like something that happens in films. I didn’t know anybody who had dealt with anything like that at that time.” The thing about adversity, she says, is that it’s a test of character. “It affects you one way or another. It can completely ruin your life and you never recover, or you get this weird sense of resilience, which makes you think, ‘Fuck, I need to do everything I said I was going to do and achieve everything I can because life can change any second.’ And thank God I had that approach. Every conversation I had with Rico, I’m going to do because I don’t know what’s going to happen next week, so let me just go!”
And go she did. Again, she talks about situations rarely being black or white. In the midst of the tragedy and chaos of her life, her plans were beginning to come to fruition. “As much as so many horrible things were happening, I was also entering environments and situations that made me feel I was on the right track to getting somewhere in my career. So while I was living in that house, I was working at Urban Outfitters and in a dress shop, I was at college and I was also helping out for free at this YouTube production company.” At lunchtime, she’d borrow a camera and head off to live events and blag an interview whenever she could. “I’d go, ‘Pleeeeease can I interview you, I’m trying to build up my YouTube channel.’ So there was craziness going on at home, but I was working so much I wasn’t really there, and I was so excited just to be in these environments. I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, there’s Wiley or so and so in the same room as me!’”
She was making so many new contacts and friends. Did she tell them about all the bad stuff in her life? “No, I didn’t tell anybody. I used to lie. When I met people for the first time, I’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, I just came from Bristol.’ I didn’t want to get into everything with people I’d just met. Even people I’m still friends with now remember they’d say ‘Let’s go to your house,’ and I’d be like, ‘No, someone’s ill who lives at home.’” She pauses. “Well, I’m not going to bring people from college to a house where there’s drugs everywhere.” And she didn’t want to tell people about what had happened to Rico because she didn’t want it to shape their attitude to her. “I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. I don’t like pity. It doesn’t make me feel comfortable.”
After studying performing arts at Westminster Kingsway College, Jama joined MTV in 2014 to present music show The Wrap Up. Before long she found herself invited on to chatshows, hosting awards ceremonies and co-presenting gameshows.
As had been predicted so many years earlier, she was a natural – a born chatter, curious, relaxed and likable. The TV gigs became bigger and more prestigious. In 2020, she co-presented Peter Crouch: Save Our Summer, a show designed to make up for the disappointment of the cancelled Euros during the pandemic (Jama loves her football, and is a “rubbish” Bristol Rovers fan but is genuinely devoted to West Ham). Then in 2021, she replaced Stacey Dooley on Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star. And in 2022 she got the big one, taking over from Laura Whitmore on Love Island.
Of course, this kind of success comes at a price. For Jama, that’s been a public obsession with who she chooses to date. Between 2014 and 2019, she was in a relationship with the rapper Stormzy. Then she was briefly engaged to the basketball star Ben Simmons. Jama says her relationship with Simmons taught her how tricky long-distance relationships were, and that she wasn’t yet ready for marriage. “It was just a whirlwind romance, and I hadn’t done a lot of the things I wanted to do. I hadn’t done Love Island, I hadn’t done the cover of Vogue. I had so many career dreams I wanted to achieve before getting married.” I ask if Simmons is as tall as Stormzy, who is 6ft 4in. She gives me an are-you-kidding look.“Ben is 6ft 10in.” Can I ask a technical question? “Go on,” she says. Is it hard to kiss somebody that tall? “Have you never seen any films? Hahaha! Someone bends and someone doesn’t. I think people make it work, height-difference wise. I’m quite tall – 5ft 8, and I usually wear heels.”
At times during her relationship with Simmons, she found herself alone in New York and in need of a friend. She tells me of the occasion when she was stuck in a hotel, and walked out into the street in the early afternoon in search of a light for a cigarette and a chat. “I asked for a light from this guy who was in his late‑50s doing construction. He gave me a light and we were having a chat, and I was like ‘D’you want to go to the pub?’ And he was like, ‘What?! I can’t go to the pub with you, are you serious?!’ I was like, ‘I literally don’t have any friends here, my partner’s at work.’” Why did he think he couldn’t go to the pub with you? “I was all glamorous and walking down the road in my outfit, and I found out he lived in a hostel and was homeless at the time, and we bonded. He eventually allowed me to take him to the pub, and we ended up spending six to eight hours together. His name was John, and he kept trying to leave. He kept saying, ‘I feel like I’m taking your time up.’ And I was like, ‘NO.’ John had no idea who I was, which was great. I just wanted normality and somebody I could go to the pub with.”
After a couple of drinks, she says, he relaxed. What was his tipple? “I was having tequila ginger beer, and I said try one of those, so we ended up on the tequila ginger beers. His parents had been arrested when he was young, and I said I’ve got a dad in jail, well in and out of jail. We ended up sharing all these stories. He was lovely. We stayed in touch.”
Jama has said she’s never been single long enough to be a Love Island contestant. How long has she been single now? “Since July.” Who was your last partner? “That was Michael part two.” She starts again. “Stormzy part two.” How many times have they split up? “Twice. Only twice.” Will there be a Stormzy part three? “No, I think we’re happy in this friendship zone.” The public seemed invested in the success of their relationship. Why does she think they were such a popular couple? “I think it’s nice that people love him for being cute and love me for being cute, and when two people you like come together then people get excited by it. That’s just what happens in the celebrity world, don’t you think?” Does that create pressures? “No, because I don’t read that stuff. I don’t look at it. Anybody I date is going to be a thing at the moment. Because everybody I’m seen with – any friend, or my cousin recently – it’s Maya and the mystery man, so I can’t be seen with any man publicly without the media making a story of it.”
Love Island wasn’t a straightforward gig – by the time Jama joined it had become one of TV’s most controversial reality franchises. While former presenter Caroline Flack took her own life after an incident unrelated to the programme, two former contestants killed themselves shortly after appearing on it. It has been suggested that such an exposing show will inevitably result in some contestants having mental health problems. Does she worry about them? “Yes. I do feel protective of the islanders just because most of them are around my age, and I think, ‘Bloody hell, if I was in there.’” Is there sufficient safeguarding? “I do think ITV now does a really good job. There are so many checks. There’s a psychiatrist on set at any point. They go the extra mile now to make sure people are well looked after. They have made a conscious effort to make sure that if anybody has any issues they can speak to psych, they can talk to producers at any point, so yes I am protective of them.”
As for The Masked Singer, she tells me how much she has always loved it, and what a treat it is to be a judge on the upcoming series. “I’ve never been ‘Wow!’ about who gets revealed. I just like the singing and the costumes. It’s good vibes. I love it as a family show. Because I do Love Island and shows that are catered to a different crowd, I wanted to do something that my friends and their kids could watch, stuff my family could watch at home, and shows that are a bit more wholesome.”
The highlight for her is fellow judge Jonathan Ross. “You know the best thing to come out of it is our friendship. He is one of my favourite. Humans. Ever.”
The waiter approaches urgently. I think he might have just clocked who Jama is. He speaks quietly, intensely … “I’m going to need this table back in four or five minutes. I’m sorry,” he says. Bingo! I say. Total non-recognition. “That’s a result isn’t it? I don’t have any clout here,” she says happily.
I ask if she can see herself retiring from public life and having kids one day. “Yeah. But I also more want a family than just want children. Because of the way I was raised and it being all over the place, I’m very conscious that if I’m going to start a family I want it to be with the right person. I want it to be one that lasts for ever. But yeah, I do imagine myself with kids one day.”
A while ago, I read that she said she hoped to retire at the age of 40. No, she says, that’s not quite right. “What I said to my financial advisers is: ‘Could I retire at 40, the way I’m going?’ And they said yes. Which is great. But I am the breadwinner of my family, so being the older sibling and being the one in this career, I pay everyone’s bills and I give everybody money, so it’s quite a responsibility.”
We get up to leave. “Well, be nice about me!” she says. Why would I want to say anything horrible about you? “I imagine, ‘I liked Maya when I was in person with her, but she’s a shit host. Hahaha!” Does she really worry about what people think? “No. I think I’m a nice person, so I don’t worry.”
That is at the root of everything, she says. “I’m nice to everyone I meet. If everyone was nice to everyone, maybe we might not have as much fuckery. I’m lovely till someone’s horrible.” What is she like then? “If you’re horrible, I’m like: ‘Oh fuck off then.’ There’s a Tupac lyric that says, ‘I ain’t a killer but don’t push me.’” And with that, she gives me a hug and heads off into the world, laughing.
• The Masked Singer starts on 4 January at 7pm on ITV1 and ITVX, and continues on 5 January at 6.30pm.
