When Maya Jama asked her financial advisors, “‘Can I retire at 40?’ they said, ‘Yes … you definitely can.’ So that’s the aim, but I want to make a lot more money first.”
The 30-year-old Love Island host and presenter-elect of The Masked Singer (she takes over from Rita Ora as a judge on the next series, which starts next month) has come a long way in the past 15 years. Born in Bristol, Jama’s story is one of huge resilience. Her father had been in and out of prison for a series of violent offences and she cut ties with him altogether when she was 12. And she had only been in London a short time when her boyfriend Rico Gordon was shot dead, caught in the crossfire of a gang shoot-out in Bristol. Jama had been on the phone to him when he was hit by a ricocheting bullet. Her reaction? “I decided to stay in London and try to make it work.”
Jama has since become one of the UK’s biggest stars, which is why The London Standard named her one of the Top 100 people shaping the capital, alongside Bukayo Saka, Louis Theroux and Dame Tracey Emin.
“By the time I was 16, twice my nightmares had already come true,” she says sombrely. “When the worst thing you can imagine has already happened, there are two options: you go home sad or you say, ‘I’m still here, I can get through.’ And that has been the juice that fuels me.”
It has also powered Jama on to recently buy her first London house. Not everything has gone smoothly, however, and she did break up with Stormzy for the second time in July — to the great upset of the internet, which was unusually full of people gunning for the couple. There is no new man on the scene but the stakes are high, particularly after her recent birthday.
“Thirty is a milestone,” she ponders. “I am so happy right now but the next person I meet I want to marry and have kids with, so obviously I’m feeling fussy. I’ve created such a nice life for myself alone and I don’t want anyone who’s not going to add to that. I’m in this lovely bubble and I don’t want you unless you make me happy. If you’re not, I kind of don’t need you. One thing I’ve learned: some people are like, ‘I’m lonely, I need someone.’ But the mission in life is to make yourself happy, then find someone who brings something that matches that to the table.”
Some men might find Jama’s success daunting. Doesn’t it actually get harder to meet the right person with her profile? “I don’t have a problem meeting men,” she says. “I’ve never struggled romantically, can I say that? But yes, finding someone who truly gets you is the challenge.”
The right man, the right work, it’s all part of the 10-year plan. The day we meet, Jama has been announced as a host of this year’s Fashion Awards; she’s also been busy recording The Masked Singer and has just returned from a Fashion Trust Arabia event in Morocco. Her diary is crazy but she manages it all with charm — and the studio is alight with people declaring Jama the nicest, most genuine celebrity they have ever met.
Her mixed heritage (Jama’s mother Sadie is of Swedish/Scottish descent, her father Hussein is Somali) has endowed her with the looks to become an ambassador for Dolce & Gabbana, but it’s really the disarming openness and energy that have made her such an in-demand TV personality.
“I was bottom set for English and Maths at school and a bit of a class clown, but a few teachers did say, ‘You have something Maya, if you could just find an outlet for it.’”
She was just 16 when, having narrowly failed to win a role in the Channel 4 show Skins (the teen drama was both cast and set in Bristol and made the names of Daniel Kaluuya, Dev Patel and Nicholas Hoult), she moved to London and enrolled in a performing arts course at Westminster Kingsway College. Jama had one goal: “I wanted to be the new Keith Lemon,” she laughs. “I loved Bo’ Selecta! and, honestly, getting on TV and doing even one sketch, that was the height of my ambition. I didn’t exactly grow up with contacts, help or hand-outs. If anything, people expected me to fail.”
And yet, the opposite has happened. Within a year she was presenting for production company Jump Off TV and quickly graduated to MTV and hosting a show on BBC Radio One. These days her CV boasts an extraordinary range of jobs and businesses. As well as TV and modelling, she recently bought a stake in Swedish milk company Sproud (Jama doesn’t drink dairy milk and Sproud is made with pea protein). “I was getting tired of just signing a contract to promote a product and then that relationship ends,” she explains. “I want to own something, to invest in a project I believe in long term.”
Another of her new ventures is theatre. In the summer she took a role as co-producer of Benedict Lombe’s acclaimed play Shifters alongside Idris Elba and Little Simz. Again, it’s a possible signpost to the future.
“I’ve done every TV show in the UK that I want to do,” explains Jama. “My little experiment with producing showed me I’m ready for a new challenge and that might be acting. I’m open to it.”
If she does take up the challenge she certainly has other influential Londoners to call on for advice: Elba — who is also on The London Standard’s Top 100 list — is a friend and his career is one she already follows for inspiration.
“Idris is a real role model for me. First he’s a great actor, but he has also carved out this amazing DJ career and runs several other businesses too,” she explains. “Rihanna is another inspiration. She’s a best-selling artist but most of her money these days comes from her fashion line Fenty. And I spoke to Victoria Beckham again recently [at the Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Awards] and she’s grown so much too: from Spice Girl to global fashion and beauty entrepreneur. People used to say to me, ‘Stay in your lane’, but that means thinking small. My ambitions have evolved, now I think big.”
Last year Jama succeeded Kate Moss as the face of Rimmel. It’s a powerful position and she takes her position as a role model to young women seriously.
“I like to think women relate to the fact my life has not been perfect,” she says. “Some things I’ve been through I hope most people will never experience but I’ve come out the other side. That’s the inspiration I want to be. I hate the idea of others being judged for the way they look.”
My ambitions have evolved, now I think big
That is not always how the world works though. Haters are real. Jama is all too familiar with the terrible fate of former Love Island presenter Caroline Flack who took her own life in 2020 after years of social media abuse. And the recent death of former One Direction singer Liam Payne served to underline just how fragile existence in the public eye can be.
“Liam and Caroline … both those deaths were so sad and terrible,” she agrees. “People forget that people in entertainment are humans. You get treated like a product sometimes. I’m not one to complain because I love my career but it can be f***ing intense. If you have no support, have different vices or have less resilience, it’s frightening.
“My strategy is not to engage because I’ve been trolled and it does affect you. You read something really horrible and think, ‘That is so mean’, and you want to reply but that’s what they wanted in the first place. There is a dark side to being in the public eye — I never want to get into a situation where I’m letting the bad stuff in.”
She copes by surrounding herself with old friends. When she turned 30 in August the birthday celebrations were carefully curated. First there was a party for family and friends at the Belvedere restaurant in Holland Park. After that there was a break in Ibiza. “I was there for almost a month — can I still call that a break?” she enquires through a distinctive throaty laugh. “I turned 30 so, yes, I went clubbing but I needed that time to fit in some wellbeing and health stuff too.”
Jama has now been a Londoner for almost half her life and the next 10 years, she is confident, will be her best. “I am so grateful to this city,” she says. “The people I met when I first arrived are still my friends now. This is the place that makes things happen.”
Maya Jama is the co-owner of Sproud plant-based milk, sproud.uk
