When Halliwell famously dubbed Thatcher the “original Spice Girl,” the comment caused immediate tension for northern-raised Melanie Chisholm. “I grew up in the Northwest of England. My whole family are from Liverpool. On my dad’s side of the family, the men have worked on the docks,” she explained. “Obviously, that was very difficult for me because that was not my opinion. I think that was one of the things that was hard about the Spice Girls is that we could get tarred with the same brush. If somebody had an opinion, a political opinion, everyone would think that’s what everybody thought and felt, and it wasn’t the case.” The pop star recalled the dread of returning home to her working-class roots after the interview, stating: “Being a young girl going back to Liverpool… It’s like, ‘Oh, the Spice Girls have said this.’ It’s just like, ‘Sh*t, I didn’t say it.’”
The singer also revealed that the group struggled deeply with a management style implemented by Simon Fuller, which she claims was designed to actively destabilize their tight-knit bond. “I believe his thought process was always ‘keep them separate’, because he’d tell us different things to each other, and it just caused a little bit of unrest,” she told Theroux. “I do believe it was his way of trying to keep control of the beast, but it backfired on him, and we left him.”
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