Nadiya Hussain has revealed further insight into the tense time leading up to her BBC show getting the axe.
The Bake Off winner’s decade-long relationship with the national broadcaster came to an unceremonious end last June, with the BBC announcing it had made the ‘difficult decision’ to not commission another cookery show but ‘remain open to working with her in the future’.
In the months that have followed, the TV personality, 41, has been candid about her perspective on the shock axing, insisting that she ‘won’t be grateful’ and felt as though the BBC ‘keep you till you’re no use to them’.
In her social media posts and interviews, she also touched on her difficulty of navigating the TV landscape as a South Asian Muslim woman – chronicling some of the negative experiences she has faced.
In February, the cookbook author shared in a tearful social media video that she had left her new job as a primary school teaching assistant after it wreaked havoc on her health.
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Although she has previously said she ‘doesn’t know why’ her show wasn’t renewed, in a new discussion reflecting on her exit from the BBC, she has spoken about the circumstances around the cancellation.
Speaking to Radio Times, she claimed: ‘I’d had really difficult conversations, I was like: “These are the people I don’t want to work with any more. This doesn’t align with me anymore. I need the recipes to be the focus.
I need it to be less about what I’m wearing, the props and the colour of my lipstick. It needs to be about the food”. Not long after, my show was cancelled’.
Discussing her unease at how she was being portrayed on screen with The Guardian, she shared: ‘ I started to feel like a caricature of myself. I’d become a version of myself that was manufactured and comfortable for everybody.
‘I’d become this palatable version of a Muslim that could be on television, that could write cookbooks. I’d become this really comfortable version of myself that was easy to digest.’
She concluded that over the past year she had realised she ‘can’t fix a broken industry’.
Meanwhile, the show that launched her TV career in 2015, The Great British Bake Off, is undergoing a big overhaul after longtime judge Prue Leith stepped down and Nigella Lawson was announced as her replacement.
Reflecting on the casting decision, Nadiya told Radio Times: ‘Nigella’s got a lot to live up to following Prue.’
Although she did add that ‘the magic has disappeared for me…’
She continued: ‘Sometimes it feels like it’s competing with some of the shows on Netflix where it’s bigger and bolder and more outrageous, and I don’t think it needs any of that. It’s a beautiful show, it’s a classic.’
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