EVERYONE WANTS ME AND STORMZY TO GET MARRIED
Maya Jama is officially the woman of the moment. As she stars in the new Gap Logo Remix campaign, she speaks to Grazia…
IF 2018 COULD craft its own It girl, Maya Jama would be it. A TV and radio presenter ( her two new Radio 1 shows every Friday and Saturday have just been announced), she’s also passionate about mental health and hosted the world’s largest lesson on the subject at Hackney Empire last year. She’s an Instagram star with half a million followers and precisely zero pretence. Her ‘message’ is to show young people that you can succeed whatever life throws at you. Last year, she made a documentary about her father bouncing in and out of jail as she grew up, and has spoken about the tragedy of losing her ex-boyfriend, who was shot and killed in a pub when she was 16. She’s also one half of one of Britain’s new power couples: her boyfriend of three years is grime artist and face of Corbynism, Stormzy.
The pair are rarely far from reports that a marriage is on the cards, fuelled by Stormzy regularly tweeting things like, ‘Maya Jama is the most beautiful girl on planet earth.’ Is an engagement imminent?
‘It’s quite hard being a young couple,’ says Maya, 23. ‘Because we’re in everyone’s faces, people want us to get married and have kids. I’m just like, give us a break! But he’s lovely, and I’m super proud of us. It’s nice to feel like we’ve come up together.’
Beyond her relationship with Stormzy, 24, Maya is making plenty of waves of her own. So much so that she was asked to star in the new Gap Logo Remix campaign alongside other figures who were chosen for ‘remixing creative culture on their own terms’ (Maya was specifically approached for her dedication to mental health).
‘I didn’t think people like Gap knew who I was,’ she says. ‘It was huge to know that people are paying attention and respect what you’re doing. When I heard the concept of it, about people who haven’t gone the normal route and done things in a different way, I said a million per cent yes.’
What does not going down ‘the normal route’ mean for her? ‘I’ve not come from a typical family background and I’ve been through a couple of tragedies in my life, at a young age. I haven’t let that define me as a person, or feel that I’ve got any lack of opportunities because of what I’ve been through. Young people, old people, in any kind of situation, can see me and think, “She’s done good and been positive and achieved everything that she’s wanted to achieve.” I hope people get that message from me.’
She speaks at double speed and has, in her own words, been a ‘loud, overexcited child since I was about 10, saying I’d be on TV one day’. Other than a hint of shyness when she says, ‘I think I was the only British person Gap chose to feature,’ she’s astoundingly confident.
She admits that ‘going through hard stuff makes you push a bit harder because you realise that life is so precious’. But she rails against the idea that a difficult childhood is what’s driven her: ‘I wouldn’t put my success all down to that.’
Her ultimate goal is to be a ‘household name on screen’ and mental health is still at the top of her priorities, fuelled by the ‘anxiety and depression’ she sees on social media. Stormzy has also publicly spoken about his struggle with mental health.
‘If you’re in contact with somebody who is going through something, it can be quite confusing if you don’t really know much about it, especially as a young person, or how to deal with it,’ says Maya. ‘Some people take going through depression really personally, but the more we know about it, the more we understand it. Personally, I get anxiety, and I didn’t even know what that was before. If you’re able to speak about things that you’re going through, it takes a lot of pressure off.’
Is there anything Maya’s not good at? ‘Loads of things!’ she laughs. ‘Cooking! Anything other than talking, basically, I’m not good at.’ Somehow, we’re not sure we believe her.