Jameela Jamil’s boyfriend James Blake has hit out at her critics, saying she is “dog piled on every day for such ridiculous things”.
On Thursday, the actress and TV presenter dismissed claims she makes up health issues for attention after a string of Instagram posts suggesting she has been inconsistent in her accounts of past injuries and illnesses went viral.
Now James has leapt to her defence in a lengthy Twitter post, saying he “would have spoken on this earlier but Jameela asked me not to”.
He said that Jameela had “just done her best as an ever-learning human, as most of us are, to help other people with her privilege”.
“She does this because she had such a difficult life,” he added.
“Because she doesn’t want others to feel alone, gaslit or ashamed the way she has.”
In the Twitter post, the musician said he has first-hand experience of Jameela’s illnesses.
“I actually live with her,” he said.
“Her being attractive, tall and successful doesn’t mean she hasn’t been sick.”
Jameela has previously spoken about her health problems, which include being diagnosed with a genetic tissue disease as a child, her battles with an eating disorder and damaging her spine after being run over by a car aged 17.
The former host of Channel 4’s T4 responded to criticism of her talking about her illnesses after a social media user claimed to have found discrepancies in her accounts of her health.
James said: “You don’t know what her life is and has been like.
“But I do and I’m not gonna stand by and let some total strangers try to push my girlfriend over the edge to what … stop her helping kids with eating disorders?
“Stop removing mainstream shame of talking about mental health?
“What are any of you even doing? And why are so many of you enjoying this?
“It’s sick to watch and I don’t ever see men treated like this, the way we tear women limb from limb.”
On Tuesday, Jameela joked that she hoped to have a “calmer week” than the one before, as she reflected on the “clusterfuck” of having come out amid a backlash over her involvement in a new show about voguing.
“Well. Last week was a perfect clusterfuck,” she wrote. “It was completely overwhelming.”
Admitting she felt her timing was “bad”, “inappropriate” and “unfortunate’, Jameela continued: “The sequence of events was insane, a misunderstanding was left uncorrected for too long, and misinformation spread too far, too fast, then my timing was bad, and in a moment of distress and pain, personal things were blurted out because when you have a secret for decades and you’re traumati[s]ed, it always feels like it might just fucking burst out of you at any given moment, even the most inappropriate and unfortunate ones.
“I thankfully chose the *most* inappropriate and unfortunate time, maybe ever, for mine. So now you don’t have to feel embarrassed about yours. I PEAKED FOR ALL OF US!”