One of my wildest dreams has come true a mere 16 years late.

Or is it right on time?

Sorry for the wait. I spent the entire past 10 days since my last piece, in anticipation of a wild backlash for saying the unsayable. I am loathe to admit I have multiple drafts of essays I wrote in the past week, to further explain or justify my impassioned rant. But I didn’t need them, because almost nothing really came. The piece went viral on social media, and I’m sad to say, that hundreds of thousands of women especially, resonated with what I said. Some of the most famous women of all time, most of whom I’ve never spoken to, reached out to me to say it echoed their experience with female journalists, women who have been dealing with this for over 20 years… and have just been made to swallow it. It made me feel both vindicated, and deeply distressed that this is the current state of things in 2025, not only within my industry, but across all industries, and in schools. That is in no small part down to the behavior modeled by the media. It infiltrates culture, which infiltrates society, which stains the fabric of what is deemed a normal way to treat people.

In short, thank you for your support, and for spreading it far and wide, and for your letters of solidarity and shared experiences. You have galvanized me to engage with more self sovereignty. And I hope I can return the favor.

Anyway, now to my actual piece. About how long dreams take to come true. Sometimes, after you’ve buried them altogether.

This week I had my first ever PIXAR movie come out!

I am a long time fan of Pixar, and was going through old photos, and uncovered pictures of me 16 years ago, walking around their studios in California, as a visitor. I was taking fan pictures with the life size plastic models, looking at all the early sketches on the walls, of my favourite characters, and closing my eyes tight, imagining how cool it would be if I could ever be a part of this world I loved so deeply. I had zero plans to act at that time. I didn’t dare entertain it. But I logged it that day as a bucket list (extremely) long shot. I started going up for VoiceOver for any role I could find in animation 9 years ago, with the explicit end (dream) goal being Pixar. I was trying to build a showreel and reputation. Never did I think it would actually happen, especially as the films come rarely, because they each take around 5 years to make, and they normally cast superstars, which I am not… and so to look back at the 23 year old in these pictures, and know that those silent wishes she made came true almost 20 years later.. feels deeply surreal and reassuring. She’d finally think I was cool. She would be concerned that I haven’t changed my hairstyle at all since then.

We live in an exhausting culture of success being treated as a rapid miracle, and speed being celebrated over a long game of cultivating your craft, gaining experience, and working hard. 30 under 30, 40 under 40 lists… subliminally signaling to you that if you haven’t done it already it’s not happening for you. EVER. So you may as well give up.

PLEASE DON’T GIVE UP UNLESS YOU CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE. UNLESS IT NO LONGER BRINGS YOU JOY.

I find it all so distasteful and irresponsible, this obsession we have with achieving all your milestones while you’re too young to know how to even process them… and degrading a slow and steady hustle, and the far greater ease with which you can manage stress with more of a lifetime under your belt. Even if you haven’t started yet, you’ve built skills over time, while doing other shit, that will in some way have sharpened your tools. Ideas will have been brewing. Inspiration growing, and perhaps a deeper yearning for it, leading to greater passion and work ethic. You take less for granted when you’ve been starved of your passion. Many of the things I’ve been lucky to do, I wasn’t specifically trained for, but life experience had prepared me for those challenges. The time I had spent working on my intellect, wit, brazenness, and understanding that it’s ok to fuck everything up sometimes… gave me an edge. Something resembling confidence. The calm that comes with time to learn that you’ll be ok if it doesn’t work out, because you built the rest of your life up regardless.

I of course, cannot guarantee your success. I can’t even guarantee that you will live another day (dark, sorry, but look at the state of things.) I just want to remind you that you never know. So much of this is sadly a durability game. Who has the grit/self belief/access/luck to last through the endless turmoil of the ups and downs, the broken promises, the self sabotage, the mistakes, the shame, the insecurity, the sheer terror of going out on a limb. So many skilled and talented people get discouraged and tap out early, and it kills me to watch others plant seeds of doubt in them. Nobody should ever tell you that you’re done. That is your decision alone. I have never been discouraged by someone more successful than me. Only ever by others too scared to go after their wildest dreams, who are unaware that it pains them to watch others dare to give it a shot.

In 2014, I made the insane decision to leave my stable career as a journalist and DJ in the UK, and head to Los Angeles to write comedy. I made this decision quickly and alone. At the age of 29. I was told I was too old, too overweight, literally one size bigger than I am now, too unknown in America, one agent told me if I wasn’t able to be thin, I would need to be fatter to find work, I was told I’m too weird for America, and too Asian to bother trying. One agent tried to encourage me to tell people I was Latina, because there were no rules for people of Muslim heritage in Hollywood. I was told I needed a nose job. I was told I was funny…for a girl. One agent also told me not to sleep my way to the middle, which I thought was quite funny, while also disturbing, as the assumption was, I should still sleep my way up, but do it with the best…

Tragically, that was never an option for ol’ Frigid Jones here, I lack the kind of sex game/upper body strength that garners success. I would perhaps be the first woman to successfully sleep her way down the industry.

I had lost all my money in my first 6 months of leaving for America. I had no visa, no agent, no contacts, no friends, no more than 11k instagram followers on a very dormant account. I was of course afraid of destroying my life on a hope and a prayer. But I was significantly more afraid of being haunted by the words: