Jameela Jamil Never Acted Before The Good Place??

Jameela Jamil was a TV host in the UK before being cast as Tahani al-Jamil in Mike Schur’s The Good Place. Can you believe?

In a new profile with GQ, Jamil comes across as one of the most charming, funny, and relatable people alive, but also one of the most gorgeous and naturally talented people alive. Who also stars on my current favorite television show. Help.

Jamil jokes, “There are newborn babies who have only a tiny bit less experience than I do in acting,” but being on set was a crash course in acting from Ted Danson. He apparently spent her first day on set pretend-farting in her general direction:

He kept pretending to fart on me, just to make me less nervous. And while that was perfectly disgusting, it was also incredibly effective, because how weird, when Ted Danson keeps making fart noises and pointing his bottom at you.

Jamil says that when she signed up for the show she had no idea what it would be about, and wondered if she’d just signed a seven-year deal for “Mike Schur’s first porno.” But the show has been a success and met with critical acclaim, despite initial fears it was too “high-concept for America.” A fun detail on the show’s big Season One twist is that Danson was apparently blabbing spoilers everywhere:

I call him Loose Lips Danson. That man cannot keep a secret for love nor money. I don’t understand how we even kept the twist a secret. He was literally telling everyone.

But it’s not just Danson with whom Jamil has on and offscreen chemistry. Apparently, there’s a lot of erotica written about Tahani and Eleanor, and Jamil has read a bunch of them:

Well, I just love that all of them start with the same thing, which is that we always high-five and then our fingers clasp together and then with her other hand she starts playing with my hair. That’s always how it begins.

Art imitates life.

There’s also the fact that she got to kiss Manny Jacinto, which many have dreamed of, but few have attained. She claims they were both each other’s seventh kissing partner. When asked about it she says, “Oh my God, yeah. I got to kiss that face!” and in response to a question about what it was like reveals Jacinto’s secret:

Unbelievable. Also, he’s the seventh person now that I’ve ever kissed, so I’ve hit lucky number seven. And I’m the seventh person that he’s ever kissed, which he probably wouldn’t want me to say, but I don’t care. And it does count. It doesn’t matter if it was on camera. Our lips touched, so it counts and he can’t take that away from me.

It was also horribly awkward, but that doesn’t ruin the story for me. You can and should read the whole interview here, and fall in love with her just like Eleanor has. High five…