Jesy Nelson has candidly revealed that she tried to take her own life days before she left Little Mix in 2020.
The Boyz singer, who quit the girl group in December 2020, admitted in her docuseries Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix that she struggled with her mental health after returning to work after the Covid-19 lockdown and felt “so sad” and “so down”.
She claimed that she tried to tell her bandmates Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Perrie Edwards about how she was feeling and they allegedly didn’t support her, which made her feel “really alone” and like “no one cares”.
Recalling Jesy’s overdose days later, her mother Janice said, “For a few days before, she had just been really down and not talking much… She wanted to be on her own quite a lot. I got a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. I kept ringing and ringing, but I wasn’t getting no answer.
“She eventually answered the phone and the way she talking was really slurry. I could just hear the phone drop and didn’t hear anything else – I knew she’d done something.”
When she woke up in the hospital, Janice told her daughter, “Right, that’s it now. No more. You’ve got to stop doing what makes you unhappy.”
At the time, Jesy missed the final of Little Mix’s TV talent show The Search, and host Chris Ramsay told viewers she was ill.
This marked the second time the star had attempted suicide. In her earlier documentary, Jesy Nelson: Odd One Out, she revealed she overdosed in 2013.
The 34-year-old knew when she came out of the hospital that she “mentally couldn’t” be in the band anymore and spoke to their lawyers about quitting. The lawyer then allegedly delivered the news to the others without her consent.
Jesy claimed she later attempted to meet with the girls, but her manager allegedly said that Leigh-Anne, Perrie and Jade “would only feel comfortable if there was a therapist present”.
“I didn’t feel like they were my sisters (anymore). I’d just come out of the hospital. This is the time I need you the most,” she tearfully added, noting that she never saw them again.
“Eventually, there was a phone call. It was really awkward and so weird. It was like talking to strangers,” Jesy continued, reports The Sun. “It was the most uncomfortable phone call of my life. No one knew what to say. And that’s the last time I ever spoke to them as a group.”
The remaining members of Little Mix went on hiatus in 2022.
Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix is now streaming on Prime Video.
