Jameela Jamil finds ‘relevance’ in people saying she’s lied about her health problems

Jameela Jamil has never held back from speaking out on various issues, especially when she’s blasting Kim Kardashiann and Cardi B for encouraging eating disorders by pushing questionable weight-loss supplements, or when she accused people of being racist for criticizing her friend Meghan Markle for using private jets.

But this week “The Good Place” actress found herself on the opposite end of a social media pile-on that had some people saying she has either exaggerated or outright lied over the years about her various health woes, car crashes, bee attacks and supposedly harmful modeling career.

In fact, one woman in particular, producer and writer Tracie Morrissey, began a viral thread in which she said the self-described mental health and body-positivity activist has Munchausen syndrome, a mental disorder in which a person repeatedly acts as if she has a physical or mental illness in order to get attention.

Jamil, 33, has stood defiant against claims she has lied about her health or anything else. She called Morrissey an “unhinged idiot” and offered up another diagnosis to explain her various ailments: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare disorder that affects connective tissues. With this syndrome, she said “people doubt your illness and injuries because you look okay.”

On Friday, Jamil continued to push the Ehlers-Danlos narrative by saying she sees a silver lining in all the “bull—-” of being called a liar.

“It has raised a really important conversation about how we gaslight people whose illnesses aren’t visible,” Jamil tweeted. “Next they will say I wasn’t really suicidally depressed in my mid 20s because there were pictures of me SMILING.”

As much as Jamil also calls Morrissey “a weirdo stalker,” the writer has brought some “receipts” to her Instagram Story Highlight, which details the actress’s history of offering conflicting information, D-listed reported. Morrissey’s Highlight makes “it look like the star of ‘The Good Place’ is starring in a real-life episode of ‘The Lying Place,” D-Listed said.

E! News also reported that Morrissey had found “some major holes in Jameela’s tales of survival and triumph.”

“I’ve fallen down a “jameela jamil has munchausen’s” rabbit hole and OH? MY?? GOD???” added @JXEKER, a social media user from the UK whose tweet about Morrissey’s post helped it to go viral.

i’ve fallen down a “jameela jamil has munchausen’s” rabbit hole and OH? MY?? GOD??? pic.twitter.com/G2ym8kveJG

— JOE (@JXEKER) February 11, 2020

“There’s even a video on this story of her saying she’s allergic to peanuts and then her posting her fave peanuts on Instagram,” @JXEKER continued. He then wondered if Jamil is simply “a bull——-who likes the sound of her own voice and will tell you she’s crashed her car when really she clipped the curb.”

Morrissey has since issued a correction, saying that Jamil doesn’t suffer from Munchausen’s, but probably has “somatic symptom disorder,” a condition in which a person’s extreme focus on physical symptoms leads to major emotional distress or problems functioning. But Morrissy also clarified that she’s not a medical professional, but a “nosy lady.”

The criticism over Jamil’s health claims grew after she came out as queer last week, USA Today reported. Her disclosure followed social media backlash over her new role as judge on “Legendary,” the HBO show about voguing, the dance style popularized by the Madonna song “Vogue.”

Jamil hit back at those accusing her of lying about her sexuality, along with “the unhinged idiot” — Morrissey — who raised questions about her claims about being in two car accidents, one which she said left her in a wheelchair.

Ehlers Danlos Syndrome means always having people doubt your illness and injuries because you look okay. #edsawareness #itisntinyourhead #imsorrypeoplearedicks

— Jameela Jamil (@jameelajamil) February 12, 2020

To counter Morrissey’s arguments, Jamil launched a Twitter Q&A in which she addressed some of her health issues, including her food allergies and her brushes with cancer.

With regard to the peanut allergies, Jamil said during a 2015 interview that she was born with severe allergies to shellfish and peanuts. In that interview, she also claimed that she was born partially deaf and was in out out of hospitals as a child having operations.

Moreover, she said she was diagnosed at age 12 with Celiac disease, a digestive disorder characterized by an immune reaction to eating gluten. On top of that, she said her spine was damaged in a car crash and she once faced a breast cancer scare.

Questions about her peanut allergy arose this week when she posted an Instagram story in which she talked about how much she loves a certain brand of peanut butter-filled snacks,according to D-listed.

In her Twitter Q&A, Jamil suggested she either developed the allergies or they worsened when she suffered “mercury poisoning” in her 20s after having fillings removed from her teeth, and the mercury “created holes” in her digestive system. But she also said the allergies cleared up as “I healed my gut.”

Yep. Mercury poisoning in my twenties. Had 11 fillings removed and my stomach lining was damaged for a decade. Got loads of weird food allergies that cleared up as I healed my gut. Next question.

— Jameela Jamil (@jameelajamil) February 12, 2020

Jamil also addressed prior claims in which she said she twice had cancer, the Daily Mail reported.  Jamil on Wednesday tweeted that the first instance was a breast cancer scare when she was 28, but the “actual cancer was cervical cancer. Which is extremely common and scary.”

On Wednesday, after a different follower asked when she had cancer and what type, Jamil said, “Cervical cancer in 2016 and 2019. Both during the good place.” referring to “The Good Place.”

As for the supposed bee attacks, Jamil said that she ended up with an injured spine when she was hit by a car at age 17; she had been running away from a bee, D-listed said.

Jamil later told another story about how she was attacked by a swarm of killer bees during an interview with producer Mark Ronson, D-listed added.

“It was the most scared I’ve ever been,” Jamil said. “It was every man for himself. It was like, 500 bees. It was horrible.”

But Ronson told a far less dramatic story in an interview several weeks later, saying that one or two bees slowly buzzed around them, “so they casually went inside,” according to D-listed.

uh so this jameela jamil stuff is wild huh and I don’t believe it myself but she does love exaggerating and she does love a good bee story eh? here’s mark ronson basically calling her out for lying

“one or two individual bees approached slowly” pic.twitter.com/2cA8iKpXro

— jade thirlwall stan (@zendayandnight) February 12, 2020

In her Highlight, Morrissey didn’t just deal with Jamil’s health claims. She also dug into Jamil’s tweets about her supposed modeling career, which the actress has long said contributed to her eating disorders.

In the modeling-related tweets, D-listed said, Jamil “contradicts herself into a contradictory pretzel by saying she was a model and a model agent, and then saying she got scouted at 15 but her modeling career never happened because she broke her back, and then saying she was a teen model with an eating disorder, and then finally saying she was never a model.”

Over the past two days, while achieving “crazy rumor level” fame, Jamil has at times tried to laughed off the accusations, for example, by joking that she also has lied about being South Asian.

“It’s all Bobbi Brown bronzer,” she said, adding, “Also, I’m Banksy,”

But Jamil also has suggested that people are attacking her because of her “skin color and gender.” In the end, she said she would stand her ground and continue to advocate for the well-being of others.

“Not afraid of you or your dumb internet conspiracy theories,” she said. “Keep them coming. You just add to my relevance. 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.”

Not afraid of you or your dumb internet conspiracy theories. Keep them coming. You just add to my relevance. 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. pic.twitter.com/PttrCvifew

— Jameela Jamil (@jameelajamil) February 12, 2020