British actress Jameela Jamil is perhaps best known for her onscreen role of socialite Tahani Al-Jamil in The Good Place. Offscreen, she’s built up a reputation for being an outspoken activist for body positivity and mental health—often calling out celebrities such as the Kardashians for shilling shady weight loss products.
Naturally, this oftentimes combative advocacy makes Jamil a lightning rod for controversy and frequent target of trolls. However, Jamil recently found herself the target of Vice journalist and podcaster Tracie Egan Morrissey for a different reason entirely.
In the wake of Jamil coming out as queer—amid criticism over her role as a cisgender, straight judge on the HBO Max reality competition series Legendary—Egan Morrissey “fell down the rabbit hole,” so to speak, uncovering an alleged history of hypochondria, Munchausen’s, and fabricated injuries.
In an especially prolific Instagram story, Egan Morrissey did some pretty intense digging (for a supposedly forthcoming longer, in-depth piece of reporting), alleging that Jamil has lied or exaggerated about everything from onset injuries (including an instance in which she claims that she lost a tooth, broke her nose and elbow during a recorded segment) being chased by swarms of bees (on multiple occasions!), hit by cars (in some cases, because she was being chased by bees), and so on and so forth.
Egan Morrissey even went so far as to insinuate that Jamil has a family history of such behavior, looking into her estranged mother and brother—the latter of whom penned a 2008 memoir about dealing with “everything from mental illness to romantic frustration, from mysticism to homelessness.”
Late Tuesday, Jamil finally responded to the allegations in a series of heated tweets.
“First I’m lying about my sexuality, now I’m now being accused of munchausens?” Jamil fired off. “By an unhinged idiot who didn’t even realize in all her ‘research’ that my car accident injury stories are ‘different’ because they were about TWO SEPARATE CAR ACCIDENTS 13 years apart? You can keep it.”
“Ehlers Danlos Syndrome means always having people doubt your illness and injuries because you look okay,” she added.
A short time later, she continued with another tweet, writing that she wasn’t afraid of dumb internet conspiracy theories.
“I’m gonna keep helping people with eating disorders, and changing laws and global policies to protect kids and their mental health and there’s NOTHING you can do about it.”
Responding to another tweet about there being, like, “receipts,” Jameela once again referred to Egan Morrissey as an “idiot,” which did not sit well with the podcaster’s cohost and friend, Rich Juzwiak, who pointed out that maybe using such charged language wasn’t a good look for a mental health advocate.
But regardless of whether or not Jameela Jamil does, in fact, suffer from Munchausen’s, people are extremely here for the conspiracy theories.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Jamil was still tweeting about the rumors and responding to fans and detractors, so it seems unlikely this scandal is going to go anywhere anytime soon—especially when you factor in the impending story coming out.
READ MORE:
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- Jameela Jamil dragged for comparing reproductive rights to landlord rights
