Nadiya Hussain has spoken out for the first time since her shows on the BBC were cancelled, revealing how she’s ready to release the “digestible” and “muzzled” personality she was encouraged to be on TV and step into a more “honest” version of herself.
It’s been a decade since we were introduced to Nadiya Hussain on the Great British Bake Off and in that time she’s made countless programmes for the BBC. Watching her, it’s impossible not to love her bubbly personality and envious baking skills, so it was a surprise for everyone when her shows were cancelled and she suddenly wasn’t on our screens any more.
But, for Nadiya, it was a long time coming. In her first interview since leaving the BBC, she’s revealed that it was “really difficult” to be in the public eye, despite what her smiles and laughter on screen told us.
Speaking on the We Need To Talk Podcast, she said, “What’s really difficult about going from not being in the public eye to being in the public eye is that now you’re managed by somebody. So what you wear, how you speak, what you do, what you post, what you don’t post, all of that, somebody is always overseeing that. So you lose control.
“No matter how much you try to retain your identity, which is something that I’ve worked really hard to do, there is always going to be an element of filter,” she added.
This filter left her feeling like she wasn’t herself any more. “There’s points where I look back and I think, ‘was I truly myself in that?’” she said. Sharing just one example, she explained, “I love a good knit jumper and I was filming around the country and I was wearing these knitted jumpers. And the feedback we got was ‘She needs to not wear knitted jumpers, it makes her look bigger than she already is.’ And so you’ll never see me wear knitted jumpers after that.”
She knows now that she should have kept wearing the jumpers no matter what anyone said, but she thought that she had to do whatever she was told as, she says, “I was sold the dream career. You’ve got to keep your career going.
“I was always made to feel like my trophy was just going to get taken away from me because I felt like I always had to be grateful. I had to be consistently grateful for the opportunity I was given.”
But this led her to become “the digestible version of myself” and soon the pressure of her always having to be grateful was stifling. “Gratitude must not sit on your face like a muzzle and that’s what it felt like. I felt muzzled,” she revealed.
Since her shows at the BBC were not recommissioned for any further episodes, she’s decided that she wants to do “everything completely by myself.” She said she doesn’t “fit that space any more” that the BBC carved out for her with her cooking shows. So her new chapter is going to be a “clean slate” and she’s starting totally from “scratch.”
Following her “instinct and my gut and what it tells me,” she says that she’s found a new sense of freedom.
“I’m going to be the truest, most honest version of myself, entirely unfiltered with no management, nobody to tell me what I can do, can’t do, can say, can’t say. And only then will I know what space the industry has for me,” she says of her future plans.
“But I’m not holding out for the industry to accept me, because that’s what I’ve done my whole life. I will figure it out and I will find a space where I’m welcome. And that might not be in this industry, and I’m alright with that.”
Watch the full episode below;
