Nadiya Hussain reveals feelings on parting ways with the BBC: "I'd had really difficult conversations"

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

After winning The Great British Bake Off in 2015, Nadiya Hussain became one of television’s biggest breakout stars – a stay-at-home mum turned global cooking personality with a string of TV programmes, books and endorsements to her name. Then, last year, the BBC cancelled her shows and Hussain, 41, retreated from public view, only recently stepping forward again to promote her latest book Nadiya’s Quick Comforts – this time without a supporting TV series.

“It’s sad because I love showing people how to make recipes and how excited I am about them,” says Hussain, before admitting that “near the end” of her relationship with the Beeb, she had voiced concerns about how her programmes were being made.

“I’d had really difficult conversations,” she says. “I was like, ‘These are the people I don’t want to work with any more. This doesn’t align with me any more. 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.”

A recent news story suggested one reason the BBC pulled the plug was because Hussain had become “increasingly difficult to work with”. What’s her take? “If I was less vocal and I’d shut my mouth and did as I was told all the time, there’s a likelihood that I would have jobs that I don’t have now,” she replies. “Unfortunately, as a woman – and a woman of colour – if you speak up, often it’s considered ‘being difficult’ or ‘being a nuisance’, whereas I know, from experience, that if I was a man, they’d be like, ‘Oh, you know what he’s like.’ ”

To date, “other offers” from broadcasters have “for now” been declined, but if Hussain’s next chapter is in television, she insists the terms will change: “Unless it’s with purpose, I’m not doing it. I’ve been doing this for 11 years and I very rarely see a diverse set or meeting. Often, people of colour and from ethnic minority backgrounds don’t have that person who works in television so they don’t get a little step stool into the industry. I’d like to be that step stool.”

She’s toying with the idea of launching her own production company to action those goals (“I’m scared, but I’ve got nothing to lose”), though for now says she feels happiest away from the spotlight – where “nobody is calling the shots, nobody pulls my strings, nobody can tell me what I can and can’t do”.

Last September, she began working as a primary school teaching assistant near her home in Milton Keynes, but because of a weakened immune system due to fibromyalgia and gastric atrophy, she’s been forced to step away. “I had to hand in my notice because working with children I was constantly ill,” explains Hussain, adding that next she’s planning to train in special needs education, which would involve teaching smaller groups. She has already started learning sign language.

Musa, 19 – Hussain’s eldest with her husband Abdal – has moved out of the family home, and her other son, 18-year-old Dawud, who is mid A-levels, will be leaving for university in September. “I’ll have a whole house and just my little girl,” says Hussain, of her daughter Maryam, 15. “We want to think about moving somewhere smaller with some land so we can maybe get some alpacas and a donkey.”

Hussain is no longer frequently absent from home. Thumbing through photo albums with Abdal, 44, she realised she had “missed chunks of the kids’ lives” while filming everywhere from LA to Cambodia and Thailand. She even missed three house moves. Was it worth the sacrifice? “To some extent, yes, but I don’t want to look back at the next 10 years and think I should have thought about my kids before my career,” she says. “If anyone tells you your kids need you less as they grow up, that is an utter lie.”

Hussain describes Abdal as “still very much the breadwinner” who pays her phone bill and is an emotional pillar, too. “He always says, ‘Everything is figure-out-able’. He’s like Superman. He has the broadest, strongest shoulders of any man I know. If I’m completely honest, I love being taken care of.”

One thing they won’t do together is sit down to watch Bake Off. “The magic has disappeared for me,” she admits. “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.”

It’s also changing shape, with food writer Nigella Lawson replacing judge Prue Leith, who succeeded Mary Berry when she joined alongside Paul Hollywood in 2017, as the series moved from the BBC. “Nigella’s got a lot to live up to following Prue,” says Hussain. “It’s very easy to become quite stuffy and very proper, and I love that she’s got a little wild streak about her. I want to be like Prue when I’m older. If I get to that lovely age.”

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