Maya Jama’s relationship with Stormzy has made her "nervous" about a new romance.
The 25-year-old TV presenter dated the 27-year-old rapper for four years before they split in 2019 and Maya admitted the public interest in their romance has left her worried about embarking on a new relationship.
She told Cosmopolitan magazine: "We met before it was in the public eye. It felt like a normal relationship, and then, ‘Oh s***, everybody’s talking about us!’ We did everything that normal couples do, it was [just] on a bigger scale. When we were together, we did make a point of not making it just about the relationship. We both had separate careers and tried to keep our work as separate as possible. I’ll always try and keep it that way. You do want to keep some stuff private because it’s your life.
"It makes me nervous [about] who I’m going to be with next, because if they aren’t in the public eye already, maybe they’re going to be brought into [it]. It’s made me extra careful. I was 20 when I got into that [with Stormzy]. Now life is different. Even social media is bigger. It’s going to be harder to keep things private but I’ll do my best."
Maya also opened up about being single during the Covid-19 pandemic.
She said: "It’s a bit like, we can’t do anything, we’re inside! When I was first single I was spending loads of time with my friends. I had all these plans to go on a big girls’ trip and be my own person. When you’re in a relationship you’ve got to think about someone else all the time, whereas now it’s just me, I can do what I like. It’s a whole different life."
And Maya revealed how work saved her after her boyfriend was shot dead outside a pub when she was only 16.
She said: "When I was 16 I went through a lot. With my boyfriend passing, it gave me a fearless approach to things. I felt like life was really short. Out of everything that [has] happened in my life, that was a reality check on a massive scale.
"Statistically I should have gone off the rails then, and it feels like my career was the thing that saved that from happening because I had hope and there was something to look forward to. When you go through trauma, if you don’t have something to look forward to, that’s when you can get stuck in a rut."
Read the full interview in the September issue of Cosmopolitan, on-sale 30th July 2020.