"I get paid less to do the same job as the white version of me."
Nadiya Hussain claimed she is a victim of racism in the “broken” TV industry and that her Muslim faith has “made people uncomfortable”.
After winning The Great British Bake Off in 2015, Nadiya has gone on to host several BBC shows.
But in June 2025, she revealed that the BBC would not commission another one of her shows after a decade on screens.
She spoke about “gaslighting” in the industry and said she had not always been supported as a Muslim woman to fulfil her potential.
Nadiya has doubled down on her comments, saying:
“I get paid less to do the same job as the white version of me.”
She suggested that the release of her Muslim-inspired cookbook Rooza may have caused brands to drop her, explaining:
“It was really interesting, because I felt like people had just twigged, ‘Oh, she’s a Muslim’, and suddenly I wasn’t palatable anymore.”
Reflecting on her time in TV, Nadiya Hussain admitted she often felt “manufactured and comfortable for everyone” and had become a version of herself that could be on television and write cookbooks.
She told The Guardian: “People always ask me: ‘Are we doing better? Has it changed?’ It’s broken.
“This last year has been really important for me to realise that, really accept that, actually, I can’t fix a broken industry.”
Nadiya said her shows being axed allowed her to reassess the next decade of her career.
Launching into the spotlight via reality TV, she felt she was never in control, describing herself as a “caricature” of who she really is.
While she has no proof that Rooza caused brands to drop her, Nadiya believes it is no coincidence that centring her work on her Muslim identity made her less appealing commercially.
She added that previous cookbooks were marketed as inclusive, but Rooza “made people feel uncomfortable.”
Nadiya also spoke about the pressure to be grateful, saying she had “actively silenced” herself because every opportunity felt critical.
She even altered how she wore her headscarf, wrapping only her hair rather than hair and neck, to appear more modern.
After leaving her manager and agent last summer, Nadiya Hussain intends to focus on her own projects, even on a smaller scale. She hopes to continue publishing, including children’s books.
She recently began working as a teaching assistant in a primary school. However, she had to quit after three months due to health issues.
In an Instagram video, she said: “Unfortunately, doing a job like that as somebody with a weakened immune system it just played havoc with my health.
“As you know anyone who works in a school setting there are lots of coughs and colds bugs and I just couldn’t get better.
“I was sick all the time and it got to the point where it was affecting my mental health and I just wasn’t performing, giving my best because I was always sick.
“I had to make a really tough decision, one of the toughest I’ve ever had to make was stepping away from that job.”
“I was there for a little over three months and loved every single second of it and more than anything I just loved seeing the children grow.
“It made me realise that there are certain sectors I would like to work in and so it’s just focused me in some ways because I know what areas I would like to work in.
“But unfortunately, with a weakened immune system working as a TA in a primary school was just proving impossible and it was one of the hardest decisions I had to make to step away from it.
“I had to do it for the sake of my health but I worked with some amazing people over the last three months and they know who they are.”
Loading ...