Former Little Mix Member Jesy Nelson Reveals She Had To Shoot A Music Video One Week After Suicide Attempt: 'I Felt Very Miserable & Trapped'
Former Little Mix member Jesy Nelson is sharing more about her turbulent time in the girl group.
The 30-year-old appeared on Fearne Cotton's "Happy Place" podcast — which is part of Acast's Creator Network — and opened up about her mental health journey.
The singer told Cotton that she attempted to take her own life in the early days of the group. She said her mother, Janice White, was "distraught" after she was hospitalized and demanded that she leave the group, per the Daily Mail.
"I just remember obviously the first time, so obviously I'd taken an overdose. I went into hospital and then I had a music video like a week after..." Nelson explained.
The brunette beauty said she didn't know what to do at the time because it was so early in her career.
Nelson told Cotton that she still has insecurities and struggles. "I guess the thing that I'm better with now, is that I see little things now when I do a music video, I'm not looking on the camera and thinking, 'oh my God, I don't look as skinny as Jade [Thirlwall], Anne [Leigh-Anne Pinnock] and Perrie [Edwards],'" she explained.
"And that's what I did every single day, and for the first time ever, I did my music video and I enjoyed it. I absolutely loved it and I was like, this is the feeling I should have had the whole time," she said of her upcoming solo single "BOYZ."
"And some people were not supportive of that, and some people are and I'm okay with that. Also, it wasn't nice for Jade, Anne and Perrie to be around when I was so down, they were living their dream and I wasn't," Nelson said. "I felt very miserable and trapped and I knew that, that wasn't right."
Nelson said that being compared to three other girls every day was draining and she couldn't handle it anymore.
Nelson announced her departure from Little Mix in December. "We are still very much enjoying our Little Mix journey and the 3 of us are not ready for it to be over," Thirlwall, Edwards and Pinnock said in a statement at the time.
"I think a lot of people have misconstrued what I meant in my statement, they're like 'oh, so now she's going solo.' I never said in my statement, 'I'm coming out of the music industry, I'm not going to do music anymore,'" Nelson said on the podcast.
"I said, I'm just going to start a new chapter of my life, I just want to make myself happy. I don't know what that's going to be, but I need to look after myself now, make myself feel better again," she added.
Nelson opened up about her mental health in her 2019 documentary Jesy Nelson: Odd One Out.
Little Mix was formed on The X Factor in 2011. In her documentary, Nelson shared that negative comments directed at her on social media during her stint on the reality show impacted her self-esteem.
