Love Island is returning to our screens this June, with Maya Jama again on the helm for her second sequence because the relationship present’s host.
In October, it was introduced that Jama was taking up from Laura Whitmore as the brand new presenter of Love Island, getting her begin within the 2023 winter sequence in South Africa.
The information was met with elation from followers throughout the nation. “That is PERFECT,” gushed one commenter. “They couldn’t have employed somebody higher!!!!!!” buzzed one other.
In her assessment of the winter Love Island opening episode in January, The Unbiased’s Elise Bell wrote: “After years of prompting from followers, it seems to be just like the producers have lastly taken the trace, with Jama’s simple allure and affability harking back to Caroline Flack’s much-missed heat.
“Fairly merely, it looks like she’s all the time belonged right here, and no matter who triumphs as the ultimate couple, I believe that the true winner of winter Love Island will likely be Jama.”
However the brand new job most likely didn’t come as an enormous shock to the lady whose mom has movies of her, aged simply six, declaring she can be on TV sooner or later.
Jama, now 28, has all the time been decided. In interviews, she’s variously described her teenage self as “fearless” and being “tunnel-vision targeted”.
However again then, life was not with out its problems.
Jama is again because the host of ‘Love Island’
(ITV)
Jama was born in Bristol, to a Swedish mom and Somali father, and spent lots of her weekends up till the age of 10 visiting her father in jail.
A 2019 interview with Jama in Vogue mentioned: “The years earlier than he was despatched away are colored by imprecise reminiscences of seeing her mom’s blood on the kitchen ground and ‘simply figuring out that one thing wasn’t proper’.”
Entry limitless streaming of flicks and TV reveals with Amazon Prime Video Join now for a 30-day free trial
Jama lower ties together with her father utterly when she was a young person. “I simply felt like, when you can’t even take the time to remain out of jail, why am I making the hassle to go and see you?” she instructed the journal.
Issues have been about to get tougher nonetheless. When Jama was 16, her first boyfriend, Rico Gordon, was shot and killed when caught within the crossfire between two gangs. Jama, who had been on the cellphone to Gordon on the time of the taking pictures, moved to his household’s London residence straight afterwards, and lived for some time in his previous bed room.
After that, she moved in with an in depth member of the family who was additionally grieving after the same tragedy. However that relative went off the rails and, in response to Vogue, developed a crack and heroin habit. Whereas issues have been powerful at residence, Jama threw herself into work.
(Gareth Cattermole/Getty Pictures)
Jama’s ascent in showbiz was remarkably quick. One among her first jobs was an internship as a runner for a manufacturing firm referred to as Soar Off TV. Inside months of being there, Jama was given an onscreen presenting position, on the weekly music video countdown. Quickly after that, in 2014, she was despatched to Brazil to cowl the World Cup for soccer community Copa90.
She additionally had a gig as a DJ on Rinse FM, and introduced on MTV (in Topshop garments she’d return the following day) and BBC Radio 1.
It was whereas Jama was presenting her Rinse FM present that somebody requested she play one in all Stormzy’s tracks – when he was a relative unknown – and he tweeted at her to say thanks. The pair slid into one another’s DMs and a relationship blossomed from there.
(Getty Pictures)
Jama and Stormzy dated from 2015 to 2019. “We have been so younger after we met, simply starting our careers. I used to be beginning at MTV. He’d not even launched a single at that time. We have been simply little infants,” she instructed The Sunday Instances’s Type journal this 12 months.
In the identical interview, Jama mentioned she is at present “actually, actually single” after her cut up from the Australian basketball star Ben Simmons.
Throughout the latter half of the 2010s, Jama hosted the 2017 Pre-Brit Awards Get together, co-presented the Saturday evening recreation present Cannonball on ITV with Andrew Flintoff and others, appeared as a visitor on Unfastened Girls, and have become the youngest individual, at 23, to co-host the MOBO Awards on Channel 5 with fellow presenter Marvin Humes.
She additionally co-presented the primary sequence of The Circle on Channel 4 with Alice Levine, and had a presenting gig on Stand As much as Most cancers.
Alice Levine and Jama introduced ‘The Circle’ collectively
(Channel 4)
Jama made a documentary, in 2017, exploring how rising up with a father in jail impacts individuals, which led to a short-lived reunion together with her personal dad. “I didn’t communicate to him once more after that,” she instructed The Guardian in 2020.
In recent times, Jama has additionally introduced BBC One’s Peter Crouch: Save Our Summer time and the channel’s New Yr’s Eve programme The Huge New Yr’s In. In January 2021, the BBC introduced that Jama can be the brand new presenter of Glow Up: Britain’s Subsequent Make-Up Star, changing former presenter Stacey Dooley, and in February 2021, Jama appeared as a star visitor decide in the course of the second sequence of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.
Later that 12 months, it was introduced that Jama can be the host of Simon Cowell’s new music competitors gameshow Stroll the Line. She has been, to place it mildly, fairly busy.
Now, it’s all about different individuals’s love lives – different individuals being the contestants on Love Island – and whether or not they’re, as they are saying, “100 per cent one another’s sort on paper”.
Jama – who’s Love Island’s third host after Caroline Flack, who died in 2020, and Laura Whitmore – didn’t need to audition for the presenting place. But she is the proper match for the present. She’s been a fan since its first ever episode, and earlier than she began internet hosting, she practised her slo-mo stroll into the villa (each the “smiley” and “horny” variations, she has mentioned).
Plus, Jama has already made it clear she’s not going to place up with tabloid gossip – one thing that can possible improve now she’s presenting Love Island.
“Looool that’s my make-up artist and my hair stylist you foolish issues,” she tweeted earlier this 12 months, reacting to a report about her being noticed with completely different males.
With Love Island, it looks as if Jama has discovered one thing the contestants are dreaming of – a match made in heaven.
Love Island returns Monday 5 June at 9pm on ITV2.
