Jameela Jamil sat down with ET to open up about the ending of the existential comedy.
The Good Place is headed to the afterlife on Thursday, signing off after four seasons of existential entertainment, and while the cast is sad to see it go, they're happy to have been able to end things on their own terms.
"I loved the ending of the show, I think it's perfect," series star Jameela Jamil told ET recently, while sitting down for an Unfiltered interview. "I think we ended it at the right place."
"I come from England, where we tend to leave a show alone almost earlier than people want it to," she added. "It's really wonderful to have the option of leaving while there are still people at the party and leaving on a high when people don't want you to go, rather than just fizzling out or just disappearing into some obscure corner of someone's imagination."
The series, which was created by The Office and Parks and Recreation producer Michael Schur, follows a group of unlikely friends who wake up in the afterlife and are forced to band together to navigate the surprising and fantastical levels of bureaucracy that govern the "Good" and "Bad" places people go after they die. The buzzy season 1 finale saw "Team Cockroach" discovering that what they though was The Good Place was actually The Bad Place in devious disguise, and since then, they've been fighting to make their way to the peaceful positivity of the real Good Place.
"It was very emotional, you're definitely gonna cry," Jamil teased of the final episode, which airs Thursday night. "But I feel very, very proud of Mike Schur's integrity as a show creator that he chose to pull the plug. And we knew a year before [that we were ending], so we were really able to savor that final season and not take anything for granted. "
Jamil has starred as posh socialite Tahani Al-Jamil since the show's first season. The role was her first as a dramatic actress -- starring alongside Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, Manny Jacinto, D'Arcy Carden and more -- after years of work as a TV host in her native U.K.
"I got offered two jobs at the same time when I first got to America, one was hosting, one was acting," she recalled. "Hosting, I've done for 10 years, so I felt very confident at that. But it's that devil inside me that wanted to try the thing that I had no idea how it would go, and if I would be a national or worldwide disgrace who ruined Ted Danson's new show."
While it's sad to say goodbye, the actress joked that she's walking away from the experience with a whole new wardrobe -- "I stole all of Tahani's clothes," she said with a laugh. But even better, she acknowledges, is a new platform and fanbase to spread her impassioned messages of feminism and body positivity.
"The Good Place is definitely the show that changed my life. Tahani is the role," she marveled. "I would never forget her. I would never have anything that I have now without her and without Mike Schur... All my activism that I've been in since I was 19 wouldn't be where it is now without [this show]."
"I think the single greatest decision I ever made was to allow my manager to push me into the audition," she added. "I was too afraid...I just didn't want to meet Mike Schur and be a sh***y actor in front of him, but I'm really glad that I went anyway."
When ET spoke with Bell at the Emmys last fall, she also expressed her sadness that the show was ending -- but positivity about the creative decision to call it quits.
“It’s not shocking that our creator made an ethical decision to end the show,” she said. “It’s where the story ends. I think it will please people, but it’s hard for us because we really like working there.”
See more from the cast in the video below. The series finale of The Good Place airs Thursday at 8:30 p.m. PT on NBC.
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