That’s So Quiche — Chris Lilley Has a New Ja’mie: Private School Girl Project Coming
Fans of Chris Lilley’s Ja’mie King will love this news because “something’s coming…”
Taking to his official Facebook account, Lilley posted a video montage full of photographs of arguably his most infamous (and popular) character, Ja’mie, who starred in the Ja’mie: Private Schoolgirl miniseries.
While no other details of the project have been released, we do know he’ll be bringing back the snobby schoolgirl, who last we saw, was in year 12 at an exclusive private girls’ grammar school in Sydney’s very wealthy North Shore district.
The series was both written by and starred Lilley, who had found fame for his various caricatures in We Can Be Heroes on the ABC.
The original series premiered in 2013 and was later showed in both the US on HBO and the BBC in the UK.
Bringing back Ja’mie may be seen as a risky move for Lilley who has had his fair share of critics, including being called “Transphobic drag” when it was released in the US.
On June 11, 2021, Netflix permanently removed four of Lilley’s programs from its platform amid the Black Lives Matter movement.
After backlash surrounding his depiction of several controversial characters, Lilley responded on his official Facebook and YouTube pages by posting a deleted scene from Jonah From Tonga, entitled Theresa Takalua. He posted the video without any context or caption, so his intention for posting was not quite clear.
On June 29, 2021, former Tongan schoolboy Filipe Mahe claimed that he was the subject of the 2004 documentary series and said that Lilley had based the character on him.
In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, he said he felt “embarrassed, full of hate, angry and exploited” after he first watched Summer Heights High.
Mahe had appeared in a 2004 ABC documentary called Our Boys, with the first episode centred around the teen, who was a “charismatic and cheeky Tongan schoolboy having a tough time because of his reading, writing and family difficulties at Sydney’s Canterbury Boys High.”
According to the now-33-year-old, Lilley came to his High School and sat in classes, all in preparation for his new mockumentary.