JESY NELSON
LITTLE MIX’S JESY NELSON TALKS ABOUT HOW SHE’S LOOKING AFTER HER MENTAL HEALTH IN LOCKDOWN AND OPENS UP ABOUT HER BIGGEST FEARS
‘i do go through times when i’m a slob’
Being a member of an extremely successful girl band means that time off is a rare indulgence, but lockdown has allowed Little Mix’s Jesy Nelson to take a break.
The star initially relished the unexpected pause in our lives. “I was like, this is a dream. I can do nothing. I can be a slob at home. I can eat what I want. So I was literally living my best life for the first two weeks. I was watching Netflix, I was not even having a shower. I was being such a tramp.”
However, Jesy admitted that her mental health began to suffer. “I felt really rubbish in myself and thought, ‘I need to get my s**t together.’ I started exercising and when I exercise, that mentally makes me feel so much better,” she said during a Steths, Drugs & Rock‘n’roll podcast. “If I don’t exercise and I feel a bit sluggish, I mentally don’t feel good.”
The 29-year-old is already fit thanks to the gruelling schedule that comes with being in Little Mix. “I do go through times when I’m a slob, but the majority of the time I try to eat healthily and exercise a lot so I’m fit and healthy for when I go on stage.”
Jesy broke up with Love Island star Chris Hughes, her boyfriend of 16 months, at the start of lockdown, and is isolating with her best friend Charlotte Driver in Essex. She’s used to spending most of her time with three other women – Perrie Edwards, Leighanne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall – and she said she misses them.
Despite their close bond, she confessed there are some things they don’t agree on. “Jade is so spiritual and loves crystals. When we’re on tour, in her dressing room, she gets out all her crystals. She loves it. I don’t really get it.”
Jesy also boasted about her stronger immune system, despite not taking part in health crazes like the other girls. “They always get a lot more ill than I do whenever we’re on tour. It’s interesting because they are the ones that take the vitamins and have the jabs and I don’t,” she said.
Her good health doesn’t stop her researching symptoms, though. “I freak myself out,”she said. “It’s not that I constantly think about dying, but sometimes I do think about how many years I’ve got left to live and then I think how quickly life goes. If I actually start thinking about dying, it freaks me out.”
The Essex-born star also spoke about how her relationship with alcohol has changed during lockdown. She explained, “I’ve found that I have drunk more since being in lockdown. I don’t actually drink that much. But when I do, oh I go in! Perrie just loves sitting at home drinking wine by herself. I hate wine, I couldn’t think of anything worse. For me, the enjoyment of being drunk is being with my friends and having fun.”
Leigh-anne recently spoke out about how racism has affected her in the music industry. Jesy explained that opening up about the impact online abuse had on her mental health in her Nta-winning documentary, Odd One Out, makes her empathetic to Leigh-anne’s experience.
“Even though we have gone through completely different experiences, I really can relate to her. Whenever she’s speaking in an interview, I notice that she really struggles to talk about it and she hasn’t got to that point yet where she can do an interview without crying. That’s how I felt, which is why I didn’t speak about it for a long time.
“I messaged her the other day and said, ‘The more you talk about this, the stronger you will become. You are helping so many people going through the same situation as you.’ I’m so proud of her because I know it took a lot for her to do that.”