there are also now more than a million people infected worldwide — that's double the number from this time last week. the united states accounts for about a quarter of all cases. 10 million us workers have lost theirjobs in the last two weeks, as the country's economy shuts down due to the spread of the virus. the weekly figures are the highest in american history. treasury secretary steven mnuchin says assistance payments should reach individuals within two weeks. in europe, spain has seen the biggest daily increase in deaths but its infection rate is slowing. in the italian city of milan, the main crematorium has closed its doors to deal with a backlog of coronavirus victims. you're up—to—date with the headlines. now on bbc news, hardtalk.

welcome to hardtalk, with me zeinab badawi in new york. my guest is the british actress, activist and model, jameela jamil. after breaking into the us and the critically acclaimed comedy series, the good place, she's been getting attention for her criticisms of celebrities like the kardashians, for their promotion of diet products to millions of young women on social media. is her campaign to make us feel better about our bodies working? jameela jamil, welcome to hardtalk. hello. thanks for having me. so, you were in your early 20s, you decided you wanted to go

into music presenting and you get this big break, you become the solo female host of a very prestigious show on radio in the uk. how important is it for you to break barriers? i think it's very important for me to break barriers. i come from a particularly erased people, you just don't see south asians in positions of privilege very often, especially not in mainstream media. and so it's something that means a lot to me because i was very damaged, i would say, by not seeing anyone like me that i could look up to when i was a child. it made me develop a kind of self—hatred because i felt like i had no worth because i couldn't see worth in anyone else similar to me. everyone else was quite eurocentric in their features, they were all white and had long blonde hair and that hurt me. and so, now i want to make sure that there is at least one, and now i'm really lucky that i've grown up in a time where there are five — there's five whole south asians in this industry that are working in hollywood at the moment. you say with great irony — five.

you are the daughter of pakistani—indian parents, but brought up in the uk. how important is your ethnicity to you? does it inform everything you do? yeah, it's very important to me. it wasn't for the longest time, that's what i'm saying, that i shunned it so heavily because i thought it was embarrassing and bad, and, you know, we were so... i grew up in the ‘90s, which was such a racist time in england and, you know, i got called a park every single day of my life and beaten up for my ethnicity... literally beaten up? literally beaten up, like, you know, once with tennis rackets by a bunch of white children. and so i was terrorised at school for my ethnicity and i was one of the only south asian girls — i was the only south asian girl in my primary school, and one of maybe four in my entire secondary school and i went to a large secondary school. so, it played a big part in my early years of my lack of identity and now, as i've grown older, and i'm getting into my 30s, i've fallen in love with a culture

again, and love the food and the music and everything, and i realise that i really missed out on not reconnecting with my culture. but, i mean, for a child, to be attacked by a group of white children, boys and girls presumably, with tennis rackets... i mean, how old were you? i mean, what did you... what happened ? i was seven, i think i had a tooth knocked out and, you know, i had cuts and grazes, but i used to get physically abused quite often at school. often by girls, caucasian women — i have nothing against caucasian people — but i had a really rough time growing up and i think representation is a big part of that. because i think if you can't... media is such an amazing way to familiarise people, the public, with different people. and if you don't do that, then they don't understand people and i think that sometimes insights fear, and i think children kind of felt afraid of me. they disrespected me and they felt afraid of me because i was different. but really, i'm not different. ijust have a different

level of melanin. but you have really had quite a difficult past, medically, haven't you? you are born with congenital hearing loss and you've talked about how you really lacked in confidence when you were at school. i mean, what was behind that lack of confidence? you described yourself as bookish and shy. a multitude of things. the fact that i was bullied, i think it develops, it fed my social anxiety, which had onlyjust... it was sort of cyclical, it was a catch—22 situation. then the more socially anxious you become, the more people bully you and then itjust kind of gets worse and worse and worse. but also, you know, i have ehlers—danlos syndrome, which is a kind of invisible disability. and that's something i've had my whole life, i was born with it and that affects my body in every single way.

and it means that i'm incredibly accident—prone sometimes, and i bleed for longer than normal people, i bruise much more than other people, it affects all of my organs, i think it's part of what affects my hearing, and so i think when you're a sick child who misses a lot of school and you lose touch with your peers, i think that's also difficult. i think generallyjust being deaf can create a literal feeling of a wall between you and other people, and again, this was the ‘90s so it was the ablest time, much more ablest than we are now. so there were just many factors that just stole my confidence from me. and then, at the age of 17, fleeing a bumblebee, a bee, you were struck by a car. yeah, the bumblebee wasn't even chasing me. ijust saw it... and what happened? i got afraid and i ran into a car, and then that car hit me into another car. nothing has ever been more my fault in the world than me getting hit by that car. and so i couldn't walk for about a year. i mean, you broke several bones, damaged your spine. yeah, i destroyed my sacroiliac, like it still doesn't feel right. it's still painful, i still have to be very careful with myself. but it was a good lesson.

it snapped me out of... i'd been very anorexic until then, which was my way of controlling the world around me, and it snapped me out of my anorexia and it gave me this new relationship with my body where i realised that this was... once i'd lost what it does for me, i'd lost its use, i suddenly started to realise everything that i'd had before that i was just hurting and punishing and throwing away over something as simple and ridiculous as vanity. and so it knocked some sense into me. so, it put your life into perspective? yeah, i'd do it all again! but you were told you'd never walk again. yeah, they said it was a possibility. they said it was a possibility, they told me that i could never walk again, because ehlers—danlos syndrome means that your damage is so much worse than other people's damage and i'd really badly hurt myself. family members had to help you to go to the loo, and it wasjust, like, you were totally dependent. yeah, and also like, most people with ehlers—danlos syndrome generallyjust end up in a wheelchair —

a lot of people, sorry, not most — but a lot of it with my condition end up in a wheelchair very young anyway, and so i have been very, very, very privileged to be able to beat the odds on that. and you mentioned the fact that you suffered from anorexia nervosa and between the ages of 14 and i7, in fact, you say you never ate a proper meal. i didn't eat a meal, yeah. what lay behind your anorexia nervosa 7 you talked about living up in the — being brought up in the toxic ‘90s, do you think that there was something about that decade that kind of meant that you ended up with this eating disorder? well, it was the era when you had grown adults, not ironically using the term "heroin chic" as if was something luxurious to aspire to. you know, when you had people actually dying of famine in the real world, a matter of hours away from you, we were emulating that look and forcing women to starve themselves until they could barely function and that was considered glamorous and it was hyper—normalised, which is so weird when you look back at it. so, i grew up in that time.

you know, you had very dangerous quotes like, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" and you had big famous actresses giving weight—loss tips in every single interview. and so, you know, i was consuming all the diet products, consuming all the diet rhetoric, i was just marinated in toxicity, and i was just surrounded by bad role models and that's what's driven me to rewrite the narrative on that. do you think that it's better now than it was in the ‘90s? yes. our society is, yeah. we've finally got some people who are breaking through. i mean, but we are still, you know, you hear the debate still bombarded with tall slim models. and i have to ask you, though, this, because you are tall and slim, you're about 5'10", so why did you become a model and even a fashion scout yourself? 0h... so i really wanted... it's a paradox, isn't it? no, not... no, no, when i was 15, i became a model because i was a child and i didn't know that that was bad and i was deliberately trying

to starve myself and thought that was cool. and then when i was 19, i came out of that with this new realisation that i had almost died of anorexia for this fashion industry that i aspired towards, so i wanted to change the narrative of the fashion industry and i knew that the only way to do that was from the inside. and so i became a scout in the hopes of actually being able to bring in plus—size girls, i used to bring in curvy girls all the time and then fight the lead agent about the fact that she shouldn't be told to lose weight, she's too young and also her body is amazing, and try and bring in curvy girls. i was way ahead of the game where i had no idea that if i'd just stuck with it longer, plus size was going to become a huge industry. but that was something i was campaigning for. everything i've always done had been with a trojan horse intention. that's why i'm in hollywood now. like, i'm here to get my work done when it comes to activism. i should say in 2016 you had a yet another health problem when you had a breast cancer scare. yeah, but thank god that was just a scare. a benign lump, yeah. undeterred, you went off

to the united states, didn't you, and you thought, "oh, i'll try and work in radio broadcasting there," you were asked to audition for a part as an actress, as an actor, and you had never acted before. you got the part in the good place, and here you are, acting very successfully in this very popular tv series. that was unexpected success. very much so. i mean the lump, i didn't come here in spite of the lump. i probably came here because of the lump, you know, i had a week to find out if the lump was cancerous and in that week i had a word with myself about everything that probably caused that lump. all the stresses in my life and also everything that i will do if this turns out not to be cancer, and the first thing on that list was move to california, because i've always wanted to know what that would be like. and so the lump was the fuel for me to go. i was like, right, i don't have cancer, i'm very lucky, i'm off! and i came here, and my first audition was with... i had two auditions. one was for a game show, like a magic show that was shooting in vegas replacing jonathan ross, and then the other one was the good place with mike schur.

and acting was the one that i'd never done before and i have had a life lived in the deep end, and so i enjoy challenging myself and just seeing how wrong this can go. and the good place — you act the part of an asian woman and you're supposed to... you think you are in heaven, but you're all somewhere else and so on, and it's incredibly popular. but you've used the fact that you are here and that you've had these health issues and so on, to raise your voice as an advocate, which is why a lot of people have applauded your activism. but when it comes to talking about body image and so on, there was a stylist magazine in august this year where you were featured on the front page smashing a set of weighing scales. and frances ryan, a british author of a book about the demonisation of disabled people, wrote in the guardian, an online the british newspaper, that — about the troubled optics of a slim woman

smashing diet culture. and she says, you know, there's a catch—22 in fighting sexism that women must largely meet the norms, the convention of attractiveness before they are allowed to criticise the demand to be attractive. fair comment, isn't it? completely fair. i've literally been the victim of what she's talking about because i gained lots of weight when i firstjoined radio one back back at 26 years old. i was then nationally fat—shamed for about six months. so, i started campaigning very heavily against fat phobia in the united kingdom, i went and spoke at parliament about it, i released a plus—size clothing line. but my activism could only go so far. i was stopped and called bitter and jealous, essentially i was dismissed because i was a larger woman now, so, therefore, my opinion didn't count as much because i was too lazy to do the work to be slim and that's why i was sounding off about it. and so now that the same woman is slim, everyone is listening to me

as if i'm saying brand—new ideas that people haven't been saying for 30 years! and so, i feel everyone's frustration, there's no part of me that isn't denying that i have privilege, i've literally been the person ignored because i was marginalised. and then one of the criticisms of that magazine cover was that you were featured wearing a white one—piece suit and everybody was saying, "that's not available in plus sizes." yeah. i mean, you open yourself up to so much criticism, don't you? no, but that's fine! that was great! it was great that that happened because it exposed the fact that the reason i was wearing clothes that didn't go up to size 18 is that i was wearing the sponsors of the magazine. that's how magazines are funded, especially stylist, because it's free, you don't buy it. and so they rely on money from their advertisers, so stella mccartney, etc, all these different designers. these designers do not cater to plus sizes. the problem is, is that the companies that do go up to plus sizes don't have the kind of money to be able to fund a magazine like stylist, they can't afford that level of advertising. if they were funding it, i would wear their clothes! alright. so once i explained that,

i think it highlighted that the issue is it's industry—wide and i understand where i sometimes get made the scapegoat, i've put myself out there. but it doesn't make me angry, it's a really important conversation. you set up i weigh, last year, in 2018, to discuss all these kind of issues, to act as a kind of platform for you and you criticised the kardashians, in particular khloe kardashian. i mean, first of all, you actually said they should not just be reduced to women with beautiful bodies or whatever, but you had this campaign to stop celebrities endorsing eating suppressant products. butjust explain to us why you had to fall into a kind of minor clash with the kardashians over this? i just think we're living in this really bizarre time where now celebrities just have carte blanche to sell whatever they want,

however they want to young impressionable people, there's no regulations, there are no legal implications to what they are doing, they're selling toxic products that often laxatives, not declaring that they are laxatives, not doing things what we do with cigarettes and all kinds of all other different things which is declaring the ingredients and declaring the side—effects. for some reason they are allowed to just post heavily photo—shopped picture and a lie and pretend they drink this shake or eat this lollipop or eat a magical weight—loss banana or whatever it is they are selling and be able to get away with it. you used very extreme language, is that necessary? you said, for instance, of the kardashians, that "their pockets are lined with the blood and diarrhoea of teenage girls" — obviously referring to the fact that some of these products have a laxative effect — and kim kardashian's response was "you're going to have a backlash for almost everything, so long as you like it or believe in it or it is worth it financially, whatever your decision may be, as long as you are ok with it, that's alright." yeah, sell heroin to children, as long as you back it yourself — that's fine. i'm not saying that is what she sells,

i'm just saying it's the same ethos... i'm sure the kardashians don't... i would not be here right now sitting opposite you or speaking at the un or any of these things if i hadn't made a big noise and sometimes you have to use shock culture it is particularly shocking when a woman and a woman of colour speaks out because we are the ones who are the most under pressure to be obedient and so i was genuinely angry. it wasn't just a shock tactic, i was furious and it poured out. i do not tend to have a filter because i think that is something that is only really reserved for women — white men don't seem to have to have a filter in our day and age, especially not the more successful ones — piers morgan, donald trump — they're mouthing off about whatever they want, saying the first thing that comes into their mind... the british broadcaster, piers morgan. yeah! i reserve that same right and so i say whatever i want and i wanted to say something that would wake people up and make sure they knew it was ok for me to tell truth to power. and in fact, as a result of yourcampaign, it has been successful — instagram have introduced restrictions on the promotion of diet products so you must feel that's a feather in your cap. it wasn'tjust me. i think i had a significant impact on that change,

but there were also, just to be clear — experts and charities involved. related to this body image work and activism that you are doing so that young girls and older women do not fall foul of these kinds of things, you have also talked about the sexualisation of women. for instance, you have said of beyonce that, "she has sexualised herself to sell her records and of doing everything other than having a live smear test on stage." right, but you are bringing up something i said like ten years ago that i've repeatedly apologised for and explained and it's my pinned tweet... alright. 0k. but you have said similar things about the over—sexualisation of rihanna... same time. so you don't — you withdraw all of those comments? i have publicly withdrawn them maybe 100 times, i've done it in magazines, i've explained it, i was a rape victim, a multiple rape victim who did not know where to project my anger

and so i used to take aim — i'm going tojust finish, sorry — i used to take aim at the wrong target which was women and the way that they sexualised themselves. i should have been taking aim at the patriarchy that forces us to do that in a way that — i am not saying it is never a woman's choice — i believe sometimes it is a woman's choice and that's great — but i think that i should have been taking aim at the system that sexualised me from the age of, you know, being a very young child. i have been sexualised for as long as i can remember by grown men. and so i was angry and i did not know who to direct that rage at. ifelt like women who sexualised themselves were the reason that i was being sexualised by men. it was men who were the problem, those men, not the women. alright. so not about the criticisms that you've made of beyonce, but just looking at the framework in which one can cast this conversation, i mean,

there is such a thing as sex positive feminism, as i'm sure you know, a movement that began in the 1980s, the belief that the freedom of sexual expression is an important part of women achieving equality, and beyonce is often seen as the epitome of this and she herself has said, "look, men are free and women are not. you can be a businesswoman, an artist, a mother and a feminist, whatever you want to be, and still be a sexual being, it is not mutually exclusive." i agree. no, you don't need to explain that to me now. eight years ago i could have done with this chat, but at this point, i fully understand. i really support sex workers, i support the sex industry, i support the sexualisation of women if it is in their power and with their prerogative. i have not said a word in eight years... so, sex positive feminism — a woman, if she wants to use her sexuality and so on. yes, just don't sell laxatives to children. that's all i care about. just do not be a bad, dangerous — don't sell dangerous unregulated products to children and do not ever attribute your physique that is down to a personal chef,

a personal trainer, a surgeon, heavy use of photoshop, which you never declare, and pretend that you look like that because of some dodgy powder over the internet. talking about a personal chef, khloe kardashian says she does not employ a personal chef, just putting that out there... she didn't say she has not had any surgery. but cosmetic surgery — is that not the right for women to choose, if she want... yes! i think i was clear in saying, don't pretend that if you have had surgery that you have not and you look this way because of a magical powder... it is freedom of choice. i demand transparency from celebrities. it is the very least we can do. we are role models and we owe it to young people who look up to us to be transparent and to tell them the truth. if you want to have your whole face redone, if you want to look like a lion or a giraffe, do whatever you want, just make sure you declare it and you are honest about it because they need to know... but maybe some people

want to keep quiet about it. no, no, you don't have the right! so celebrities are different from ordinary women... yes... you are profiting off people idolising you. i'm not finished — sorry — you are profiting off people who are idolising you and who aspire to look like you, but this is not an even keel that we are operating on. you have all of this privilege, you have all of this money, there are many reasons that you look the way that you do and young people feel bad about themselves for not looking like you — i feel like you're just about to interrupt me. it is the time, it's the time. no, i understand. that is my main point with everything. we got that one. so, the fact that you are a role model for so many young women was the reason why meghan duchess of sussex chose you as one of her 15 female icons on the front page of vogue, british vogue, which she guest edited. so you must have been quite surprised by that, and i read that you thought that it was a hoax. yeah, it was ridiculous. i did not pick up my

phone to the first time. i didn't know who was calling me! and then you have gone on from that because you have described the sussexes as very kind, smart, funny people. and, of course, there has been some criticism in the press about meghan duchess of sussex. you said this if her in a tweet, in august — "dear england and english press, just say you hate her because she is black and the duke for marrying a black woman and be done with it." so, what evidence do you have that racism is informing the criticisms of the duchess? it is so insidious in england that you can't categorically prove it all of the time, as someone who grew up in insidiously racist england. you're not always lucky enough for someone just to call you a park to yourface. it comes in discrimination and the fact that you can hold up identical things that white members of the royal family do — to meghan markle, she does the exact same thing as one of them — they get hailed for it and she gets torn apart for it with such vitriol and perhaps i am wrong — call me crazy — but the one brown member

of the royal family seems to get an awful lot of stick. the one brown member of the royal family seems to get the most abuse by about a country mile. finally, jameela jamil, what next for you? well, i am launching my way into a full activism platform for young marginalised activists who do not have my privilege and my platform, and i'm finding a way to give them a voice and give them access to the people who can actually change the world and bring to life their vision and so it is going to be content and it is going to be podcasts and books and just a safe space for young people on the internet. jameela jamil, thank you very much indeed for coming on hardtalk. thank you. no worries.

hello. temperatures topped out at 15 degrees celsius in hampshire on thursday. they'll take a step backwards, those temperatures, on friday, but then into the weekend they're on the up. a frost for some of us, as friday starts, especially across the north and east of the uk. plenty of cloud to follow, but sunnier skies arrive at the weekend. and yes, those temperatures are heading up, but with a strengthening wind. high pressure pretty much in control of things, so still a lot of dry weather around for the next couple of days. low pressure gathering in the atlantic, though, as the weekend goes on will strengthen a southerly flow coming into the uk, and that's why those temperatures are going to be heading up. and we could well see across parts of south—east england by sunday as high as 20 celsius, first time we've reached that high since last october. but we're not there yet,

and there will be a frost across scotland, parts of eastern england to start friday, maybe —5 in rural aberdeenshire. and a few wintry showers in scotland, to relatively low levels in the north, continuing on and off during the day. a lot of cloud in the west to begin the day. there'll be a few showers around here, and cloud increasing. but where we had that cold start to the east, that cold, bright start to the east, still maybe the odd shower, but most places here will be dry. sunny spells returning later in the afternoon to south wales, south—west england, those temperatures around 8—12 degrees. that's why it's a little bit of a backward step compared with thursday. now, overnight and into saturday morning, an area of rain and hill snow pushes north into scotland, edging further north. the clearer skies will be the further south you are in england and wales, though there could be a few fog patches around. and still a touch of frost in places, though it's rather patchy in nature, that frost, as the weekend begins. another look at saturday, the flows starting to come in from the south, then temperatures gradually edging up on saturday. it's a slow process, though, and still a lot of cloud

around in scotland. the rain and hill snow clearing from the north. for northern ireland, rather cloudy, and northern england too. elsewhere in england and wales, there will be sunny spells, and those temperatures are creeping up. more places in double figures on saturday. the breeze, though, starting to pick up. and then for part two of the weekend, on sunday, a lot of sunshine around. but it will be windy, and particularly in the west, and here it'll be clouding over. we could well see some outbreaks of rain moving in. in the best of the sunshine across the eastern side of england, this is where we're going to see those higher temperatures, but higher pollen levels too.

this is bbc news. i'm david eades. the headlines: another global milestone — more than a million confirmed cases of coronavirus. 50,000 people have died. mixed messages on the value of a mask — two major us cities encourage their residents to cover up theirfaces in public, but the white house has reservations. days after saying staff on board his aircraft carrier needed quarantining, the us navy sacks its captaiin. music as medicine? we talk to the man helping to soothe the covid—19 patients