Music

Mark Ronson Has Clarified A Story About Jameela Jamil Being ‘Swarmed’ By Bees, Because It’s 2020

Mark Ronson and Jameela Jamil remember an encounter with a "swarm" of bees very, very differently, and it's being used to "prove" Jamil is a liar.

by Jared Richards  18 February 2020
Jameela Jamil and Mark Ronson

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It’s been a tough week for Jameela Jamil. After (justified) controversy surrounding her role in HBO Max’s upcoming ballroom show Legendary, the The Good Place actress has come under fire for coming out as queer as a shield from criticism (also justified, which she later recognised). Then things really unravelled.

Deep breath: we’re going in. Amid the controversy, ‘receipts’ emerged out from journalist and podcaster Tracie Egan Morrissey alleging that Jamil was a serial liar regarding her health and suffered from Munchausen syndrome. They caught on, particularly Morrissey’s allegation Jamil had ‘exaggerated’ a cancer scare into a ‘surviving cancer’ during media interviews.

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Jamil responded assuring her health issues are very real. Many online with invisible illnesses (such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which Jamil reports to have) have spoken up in the actress’ defence, noting this pile-on is similar to the disbelief the public have towards their own health issues.

In short, the whole thing is extremely messy. And as a figure who prides herself on accountability (and has something of a name for calling out celebrities herself), Jamil has responded to each major and mini-criticism. After the accusations of Jamil faking her health issues blew up, her beau James Blake even weighed in with a statement. 

“Her being attractive, tall, and successful doesn’t mean she hasn’t been sick,” he wrote.

“You don’t know what her life is, and has been like… 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.”

Whatever is happening here, it’s safe to say you don’t want to be roped into it. Unfortunately for Mark Ronson, he had no say in the matter, after sleuths found he once contradicted Jamil’s anecdote about the pair being swarmed by bees.

For the mercy of content, prior to The Good Place and her social media presence, Jamil was a British TV and radio personality, most notably hosting her own BBC Radio 1 show in 2012. Back in the day, she interviewed Ronson: looking back with The Sun in 2015, Jamil said the chat was cut short by a swarm of ‘500 bees’.

“It was the most scared I’ve ever been,” she said. “I didn’t know what it was and then suddenly I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s killer bees! Those are killer bees!’ I just ran, food flew everywhere and I destroyed the whole set. It was terrifying. We were both there and we just ran for it.”

The anecdote was aggregated at the time, picking up enough traction that Ronson himself was asked about it in 2015. In a 45 second interview snippet floating around on Twitter, Ronson remembers things very differently.

“I think something happened where I was being interviewed by Jameela Jamil…,” he says. “And we were sitting outside and there was a fruit plate nearby, and maybe two, one or two individual bees approached slowly. And instead of running from a swarm of killer bees, I think we said ‘should we go inside?’ and we walked slowly inside.”

The video is being used as further proof Jamil is a liar. Naturally, she responded in a lengthy Notes app statement. She writes she didn’t lie about the story, and only told it because of her “stupid history with bees”.

She argues that Ronson remembers it differently because it’d been five years since their 2010 interview, and points out its “sad” that the internet instantly believed his story over hers. You can read it here, if you need.

Ronson kept things more succinct, retweeting her and writing, “spoke to my friend Jameela. We’re good. Also bees suck.”

We await Jamil and Ronson’s joint apology to bees, given their endangered status and vital importance to global pollination. Gosh, 2020 sucks.