‘When I took off my headscarf, that was shocking: you were considered a fallen woman.’ Ella Al-Shamahi – the 41-year-old explorer, paleoanthropologist, evolutionary biologist and BBC presenter hailed as ‘the next Attenborough’ – is recalling a pivotal moment in her life. ‘My mum, bless her, she burst into tears. Nan asked, “What’s happened to Ella?” Mum says, “She’s taken her hijab off”. Nan went, “Oh, I thought you were going to tell me she’s become a lesbian”.’
Al-Shamahi recounts this sitting in London’s Groucho Club in her trademark black T-shirt and jeans, her dark hair loose across her face, still basking in universal critical acclaim for her five-part BBC documentary Human, launched in July, which traces the rise of humanity over aeons (‘informative without being didactic, awed without being pretentious,’ said Christopher Stevens in a Daily Mail review). The series attracted an impressive 3.5million views, including iPlayer, and was seen in 30 countries around the world – and counting.
Al-Shamahi is every inch the cosmopolitan TV professional. But that isn’t how she started out. Born to Yemeni immigrant parents in Birmingham, she embraced the family’s conservative Islamic faith with fervour. She decided to wear a headscarf aged seven. By 13 she was a missionary, persuading non-believers to accept Islam. ‘It does sound a little bit odd,’ she says.
Her siblings were ‘much more chill’ and ‘all of my school friends were obsessed with boys, experimenting with all the normal stuff you’d expect’. Meanwhile Al-Shamahi, whose investment in her faith was unusual even by her family’s standards, was spending her time planning to disprove evolution.
Ella Al-Shamahi is the presenter of Human, a series about our 300,000-year history
‘I was a bright kid in a missionary world where we took the teaching of religious texts literally,’ she explains. ‘I could see that our community was going to be screwed on two issues. One was evolution, because we did not have any Muslim scholars studying evolution. And the other was genetics. We were going into the age of genetic engineering, and needed to understand this.’
The Koran states that Allah created the universe and everything in it, including animals and humans. The best defence her group of missionaries had come up with was that scientists weren’t telling the truth. So, aged 18, she headed to London to study genetics at UCL, intending to prove scientifically how the lecturers were lying. Her first shock was realising they absolutely believed what they were teaching. She still wanted to destroy the theory of evolution, so took an MSc in taxonomy and biodiversity at Imperial College London, always looking for holes in the science. She didn’t find any.
By then she was in an arranged marriage to a well-meaning bloke with a house in Surrey who she talks about with affection, not least because he was there when she collapsed in the shower having said out loud, ‘I believe in evolution’. At 26 she was melting down, her belief system gone, her purpose uncertain, depression spiralling. Her husband did his best but didn’t know how they’d raise their future children with differing beliefs, so they separated – but still lived together.
And then it happened.
‘I said to him, “I’m going out without a headscarf”,’ she says. ‘In my innocence, it wasn’t, “Let’s go to a swanky club”. We just went to the petrol station. It was hilarious because nobody cared. For me, I might as well have been naked – and nobody noticed.’
With the Afar people of Ethiopia at one of their camps near the town of Logiya, in Human
Her parents cared, of course, as did her nan, a white Liverpudlian who converted to Islam when she was a kid. ‘One of the reasons I went into television was my parents,’ Al-Shamahi says.
‘I literally sat down and thought, “If I become a science presenter, they will still be very upset by the fact that I wear tank tops, but they like science. They will be incredibly proud of that and it will soften the blow”.’
At the same time, she was learning how to date men the Western way. Going from an arranged marriage to Tinder was a culture shock. ‘When you go for an arranged marriage, you get dressed up to impress prospective mothers-in-law,’ she says. ‘You were never worried that a man was going to cheat on you. It would shame his family. Then I joined the dating apps. The first time I was ghosted it was so shocking, because in my world, you can’t do that. I was like, is he not afraid he’s going to shame his whole community?’
She’s half-joking when she tells me that on her first Tinder dates, her missionary training made flirting tricky. ‘I could not maintain eye contact with men,’ she says, laughing. ‘We were taught that you’re allowed one look, and then you just stare at your shoes.’
Her therapist, who she began seeing after leaving her marriage, suggested a book on flirting that advised tapping someone’s arm lightly every few minutes. So Al-Shamahi began ritually tapping a date’s arm every ten minutes, like an alarm clock.
‘I would say, from the age of 27 to my early 30s, I was undatable,’ she says. ‘I became friends with one of the men and he eventually told me he was thinking, “Who the hell is this chick? She’s a nightmare, she can’t relax”. I’d go on dates all the time and just lose them so quickly. It was shocking to my friends.’
Meanwhile, her career was going from strength to strength: studying for a PhD in Neanderthals led to producing then presenting a 2018 documentary, Neanderthals: Meet Your Ancestors, with actor Andy Serkis. ‘I initially wanted to be a director, but it became very clear how bad I was,’ she says.
At work on a 1,500-year-old skull excavated from Bolivia for Channel 4’s Jungle Mystery
Her charm, style and obvious knowledge won plaudits from critics and viewers. She went on to present an episode of Horizon in 2019 then, in 2020, Channel 4’s Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms Of The Amazon and the BBC Two documentary Waterhole alongside Chris Packham.
Soon she was giving Ted talks and even doing stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe. Human evolved, for want of a better word, out of her expertise in Neanderthals and her love of fossil-hunting in Palaeolithic caves. It’s her most successful show to date, which she finds overwhelming, though she bats away any mention of the phrase ‘the next Attenborough’ as ridiculous. And she’s been dating the same man for a while.
Meanwhile, her community has moved on and now largely accepts evolution.
She seems surprised that everything has worked out. For now. She doesn’t like to seem complacent, and hates being pigeonholed as ‘the Muslim presenter’.
‘I didn’t have to take off my headscarf to do TV,’ she says. ‘And I don’t want to live in a world where you do. I don’t particularly like hijab. When I was in that community, I was very vocal, but I was holding my voice a certain way, covered a certain way, walking in a certain way. Controlling my sexuality, I would say. But I know loads of women who like hijab. I will always defend women’s right to dress how they want. Our constant focus upon that piece of cloth is unfair. I don’t think any community treats women particularly well. Women can be fighting tooth and nail for their rights within their communities and then the minute a foreigner turns up, they flip the switch and protect their tribe. That’s all that is.
‘I feel like I have to do damage control after every interview I give, because it’s so difficult to be nuanced about this,’ she continues, before her anthropologist’s eye comes to bear. ‘It’s the same whether it’s religious Christian communities, Jewish communities, Sikh communities. I’m Brummie. There are clever evangelical Christians and atheists who are morons. It’s all just tribes.’
She does feel lucky to be British, she says. ‘I’m full of gratitude. I look at my cousins and the war-torn chaos they go through. Most of them aren’t in safety right now. The best decision that I’ve ever made wasn’t made by me. It was my parents, when they moved here.’
She pauses and sighs. ‘I feel sorry for my family sometimes. I am still intense. My personality has not made things easy for them. At the same time, if I hadn’t had that personality type, I’d be living a lie right now. And I have at least learned to be a bit less odd as I’ve felt more at home.’
Less odd? I point out that she has hosted a hit science show, has a new deal for a book about how much of our behaviour today stems from our Palaeolithic ancestors (which she literally sealed on the way to this interview – it will be published in 2027), splits her time between each side of the Atlantic, and still goes digging for fossils in caves in war zones. None of this makes her very run of the mill.
She laughs. ‘It depends on what you mean [by run of the mill]. That’s the beauty of being human. I’m not saying my way is right. I have no interest in lecturing you on how to live. You know what? I just want you to be happy.’
Human is available on BBC iPlayer. Ella’s live show Becoming Human tours the UK from January 16, 2026. For tickets, see ellaalshamahi.co.uk