Inside Maya Jama’s ‘jackpot’ year earning £25k in minutes & why she’s Love Island’s real winner, with or without Stormzy

IT’S what all Love Islanders dream of – reaching the final, banking their cut of the £50k prize money, then making millions from lucrative brand deals (and finding lasting love, obvs).

But in tomorrow night’s finale, when the top three couples of Series 11 go head-to-head, there will be only one true Love Island winner – the hit ITV2 show’s hostess with the mostest, Maya Jama. 

Dave Benett/Getty Images for Jimmy Choo

Dave Benett/Getty Images for Jimmy Choo

Since January 2023, when she took over the coveted role from presenter Laura Whitmore, Maya has enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top, both on screen and across the fashion and beauty world – something Vogue described as: “A lightning rod of It-girl magic”.

Under Maya, Love Island has gone from strength to strength after a notably limp run.

This series launched with its highest ratings in two years, with an average audience of 3 million per episode.

And insiders have revealed that Maya – who in May was also being wooed by streaming giant Netflix – has boosted viewers in the 16-24 category massively. 

“Maya is proof that it pays to be nice,” says a friend. “She’s got mass appeal.

“Boys fancy her and girls want to be her best friend. She completely nails it.”

Approaching her 30th birthday more in demand than ever, newly single Maya will have no shortage of male attention either, after she and her rapper ex Stormzy, 30, released a statement on Instagram earlier this month announcing their split. 

Insiders say their break-up was due to the fact that she wanted to go out socialising, to meet exciting people and do exciting things, while he wanted to enjoy the quiet life at home.

However, their joint statement claimed they had just grown apart. 

“We fell madly in love in 2014, broke up in 2019, and then spent five years manoeuvring life apart.

“We decided to try for the final time in August 2023, and we’ve spent this past year trying our best to make it work; however, we recently decided to call it quits,” they said. 

The pair were 20 and 21 when they first met and went on to share a home in South West London.

After their split in 2019, Stormzy denied any infidelity in the relationship, but admitted he had to learn some hard lessons about his behaviour, describing it as “disrespectful”.

Speaking to Louis Theroux, he revealed: “My break-up, that was probably the biggest catalyst for growth as a man.

“It was like, OK, you made a mistake and you lose someone you loved, someone you cared for, someone who is special to you.” 

Fans were delighted when they got back together last August, but in their statement the pair said they struggled to make it work second time around, though would remain great friends. 

‘Maya has the media, showbiz and fashion worlds wrapped around her finger’

Whatever happens in her love life, insiders are predicting that the next few years could spark Kardashian levels of fame and wealth for Maya – who is already worth more than £3million.  

“Maya cannot be touched right now, she has the media, showbiz and fashion worlds wrapped around her finger,” says one insider.

“She’s brimming with personality, is otherworldly beautiful inside and out, and has invested plenty of hard graft to make her career dreams happen.

“She’s already reached career gold, and if she maintains this upward trajectory, a platinum level of fame and fortune is hers for the taking.”

Maya cannot be touched right now, she has the media, showbiz and fashion worlds wrapped around her finger

Insider

There’s no denying it’s been a jackpot year for Maya, who bankrolled over £1million, thanks to a lucrative combo of telly, beauty and fashion work.

On top of a reported £750k-per-series Love Island salary and earning upward of £50k for co-hosting this year’s BRIT Awards, as well as being part of the coveted Comic Relief presenting line-up, Maya is making a pretty penny as the face of Rimmel London.

She signed the reported multimillion-pound contract in March last year to replace supermodel Kate Moss, who held the title for 20 years – a chance that Maya said is “such an honour, and I feel so lucky to be even in the same kind of pathway”.

Instagram/Maya Jama

And if all that isn’t enough, Maya – who can make £25k for a swift 30-minute brand event appearance – banks six figures a year as the face of hair-extension brand Beauty Works, plus thousands more for lending her name to campaigns by designer fashion label Self Portrait, Maybelline, Adidas, Gordon’s Gin and her own skincare line MIJ Masks – one of her two limited companies, alongside MIJ & Co Entertainment Limited, which banked £1.3million last year.

All that’s on top of the millions she’s invested in the London home she bought last November.

Last July, meanwhile, she entered global fashion icon territory, first by gracing the cover of British Vogue, before being snapped up by Dolce & Gabbana as the face of its A/W ’23/24 collection. 

At D&G’s Milan Fashion Week show in September, she sat FROW alongside Kylie Jenner and models Alessandra Ambrosio and Izabel Goulart.

According to the Italian designers, who say the appeal of working with famous millennials lies in their hunger to change the world, Maya’s USP is her “talent, authenticity and drive to support truly inclusive beauty”. 

Love Island’s first non-white host has been vocal about failing to see herself sufficiently represented by the faces she saw on TV growing up.

Of presenter June Sarpong – who started on Channel 4’s T4 and went on to become the BBC’s first director of creative diversity – she said: “Seeing a black woman as a presenter on TV [made me] feel like: ‘Yeah, I can do that, too.’”

If she maintains this upward trajectory, a platinum level of fame and fortune is hers for the taking

Insider

Now, Maya is that woman for a whole new generation.

She’s described how she hopes to “open way more doors for other people from similar backgrounds and cultures”, and through her work with Savera UK, a charity tackling cultural-specific abuse in the UK, she not only has the power to influence culture but also to raise awareness of under-represented issues.

‘She proves that anyone from any background can be successful’

Maya knows first-hand the reality of struggle.

Raised in Bristol with her younger brother Omar, by their young Swedish mum Sadie (who named her first-born after American author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou), during childhood her Somali-born dad Hussein was in and out of prison, serving sentences for violent crime. 

At 12, she cut her father out of her life, but her uphill journey continued when, in 2011, her 21-year-old boyfriend Rico Gordon was killed in the crossfire of a gunfight.

Maya, who was 16 at the time, was on the phone to him when he was fatally shot.

Later, after moving to London to pursue her TV dreams, the relative she was living with developed a serious drug problem.

Despite all this, she never let herself get derailed. 

“Maya proves that anyone from any background can be successful and, most importantly, authentic,” explains the insider.

“She’s real and that’s what people identify with.

“She’s unafraid to be vulnerable or empathetic, while exuding the type of ‘cool’ that attracts the TikTok/Gen Z youth.

“She’s spoken honestly about the difficulties of having a dad in prison when she was growing up and that inspires young people, especially women, to overcome social stigmas.”

To the uninitiated, it could appear that Maya has popped up from nowhere but, in truth, she has spent half her life chiselling away to achieve her dreams.

As a child, she was – in her own words – a “proper little show-off”, and early aspirations to become an actress led her at 15 to audition for a series of Channel 4’s Bristol-based teen drama Skins, after casting agents visited her school.

A year on, she won a place on a performing arts BTEC in London, which resulted in her move to the capital.

Work as an unpaid runner preceded her own show on youth radio station Rinse FM, followed by hosting gigs on MTV’s The Wrap Up, then ITV’s Cannonball. 

In 2017, aged 23, she became the youngest presenter ever to co-host the MOBO Awards, before starting at BBC Radio 1 as the host of two shows a week, then going on to replace Stacey Dooley as the face of the BBC’s Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star in 2021, the same year that Simon Cowell picked her to host his music game show Walk The Line. 

‘Maya is super-famous and super-wealthy, but is unaffected by her success’

Fast-forward three years and Maya has her pick of jobs, but for a woman who’s admitted publicly that she hit millionaire status at just 24 and, more recently, said: “All my childhood goals have been achieved now before I am 30,” friends say her superpower lies in staying grounded, regardless of her success. 

“When Maya was pictured on Instagram recently with a wad of £20 notes, that wasn’t her showing off, but being tongue-in-cheek,” says a friend. 

“She’s super-famous and super-wealthy, but is unaffected by her success.

“She’s family-orientated and she’s good friends with grime artist Skepta’s sister Julie [Adenuga].

“People like that keep her grounded, and she’s not at all egotistical.” 

For her birthday on August 14, there’s insider talk of a lavish group holiday to Ibiza, although Maya – who regularly hosts her own legendary star-studded Halloween parties – has joked about the appeal of doing something at the opposite end of the scale.

”It’s pressure,” she said.

“When you’ve been doing parties every year it feels like, when you’re 30, it needs to be the biggest ever.

“It makes me feel like I should do the opposite and go on a little boat ride and do some yoga – but I doubt it!” 

However she chooses to celebrate this milestone, one thing is certain – Love Island’s hottest commodity is winning in every way. 

•  Watch the final of Love Island tomorrow night, ITV2

ITV/Shutterstock