Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
JESY I feel free
Jesy on her exit from girl band
SINGER Jesy Nelson has spoken for the first time about how panic over her appearance in a music video led to her quitting the band Little Mix.
Jesy was so anxious about losing the weight gained in lockdown that she went on an extreme diet ahead of the shoot for the single Sweet Melody.
But she still did not like how she looked and suffered a breakdown on set. She ended up sobbing in her dressing room and begging to go home.
It was the breaking point for Jesy, 29. In November she took a rest from Little Mix and a month later quit the X Factorwinning group, one the best-selling girl bands of all time.
Despite their incredible success and 60 million worldwide record sales since 2011, Jesy had been troubled with her body image and subjected to such intense cyber-bullying that in 2013 she tried to kill herself.
Lockdown had been a great release for the singer. She said: “It was the first time I could have a break and be at home around people that I love.
“It was the happiest I’d ever felt. I didn’t realise until I went back to work. I immediately became a different person.
“Whenever we have a music video I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to try and lose weight.”
Jesy drank shakes and tried to eat as little as possible before the shoot but had a panic attack on set.
She said: “I didn’t look how I wanted to look and I found it so hard to just be happy and enjoy myself.
“There’s a scene in Sweet Melody I’m not in because that’s when I had a panic attack and broke down. I was like, I just
want to go home.” As she cried in her dressing room, a friend told her: “This has got to stop. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’ll end up where you were before.”
In a 2019 BBC documentary, Jesy discussed being driven to attempt suicide in 2013 by online taunts over her appearance.
She said: “I remember going to the kitchen. I took as many tablets as I could. I laid in bed for ages and thought hurry up and let it happen.
“My ex who was with me woke up and said ‘why are you crying?’
I said ‘I just want to die. I just want it to go away’.”
Jesy told Cosmopolitan she realised after her Sweet Melody breakdown she had to start taking care of herself.
She said: “It wasn’t nice for the other three to be around someone who didn’t want to be there.
“For so long I worried about letting people down. The only person I should have been trying to make happy was myself and I wasn’t doing that.”
Jesy now feels liberated. She
said: “I didn’t know I could be this happy. I thought when I was in the group that it was just normal to feel that way.
“I’d felt like that for 10 years I just thought, ‘this is life.’ Since I’ve left, I feel free.”
She expected a backlash after leaving bandmates Leigh-anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall and Perrie Edwards but was surprised by the positive responses.
Her sister advised her to look at the reactions to her decision.
Jesy said: “I turned on my comments and sat in bed and cried because I was overwhelmed with how lovely everyone was being. It was a shock.
“I couldn’t get over how much people were supporting me and understood.” She is now in the
studio making music again and insists being a solo artist rather than in a girl band is good for her mental health.
“For people to think I’d just stop working completely is crazy as me working on my mental health is going to the studio, and creating music that I love.
“That’s what clears my head and makes me happy.
“I need to do things that make me happy now. People might think that’s selfish but sometimes you have to put yourself first, you have to love yourself, you’ve got to do what makes you happy.”
■ Read the full interview in the June issue of Cosmopolitan – on sale on Thursday.
Since I’ve left I feel free... I didn’t know I could be this happy JESY NELSON ON CHOOSING TO GO SOLO