Just over five years ago, Little Mix fans were left devastated when Jesy Nelson announced she was leaving the band after it had ‘taken a toll on her mental health’.
At the time Little Mix – which had found fame nearly a decade earlier after winning The X Factor – had been credited with leading to a renaissance in girl groups, achieving five number-one singles, selling over an estimated 75 million records, and selling over 3 million concert tours worldwide.
However, this huge success left Jesy facing, as she called it, ‘constant pressure to live up to expectations.
Soon after her statement was released, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall and Perrie Edwards said they ‘fully supported’ their bandmate’s decision.
But in the years since her exit, it’s become clear that a huge rift has formed between the women, with Jesy previously admitting she hadn’t spoken to the others in several years.
Today, a new six-part documentary following Jesy’s life and career will drop on Amazon Prime. Titled Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix, it will follow the singer as she embarks on motherhood – which recently also saw her publicly reveal that her twin daughters had been diagnosed with a devastating condition. The series will also see her detail her time in Little Mix, but before tuning in, here’s everything to know about her exit from the band and their apparent ongoing feud.
When did Jesy Nelson leave Little Mix?
In November 2020 it was announced that Jesy was taking ‘extended time off’ from her commitments with Little Mix due to medical reasons.
However, a month later Jesy released her own statement on social media, in which she announced she was leaving the band, and explained exactly why.
In her post, she wrote that her time in Little Mix had been ‘the most incredible time of my life’ during which they achieved things she ‘never thought possible’.
But Jesy went on to write that: ‘The truth is recently being in the band has really taken a toll on my mental health. I find the constant pressure of being in a girl group and living up to expectations very hard.’
She then said that ‘there comes a time in life when we need to reinvest in taking care of ourselves rather than focussing on making other people happy, and I feel like now is the time to begin that process’.
Jesy then explained how she needed to focus on spending time with the people she loved and ‘doing things that make me happy’, adding she was now ready to ‘embark on a new chapter in life’.
Concluding her statement, she paid tribute to Jade, Perrie and Leigh-Anne, who she hoped would ‘continue to fulfil all of your dreams and keep on making music that people love’.
Soon after her bandmates released a statement that said although it was an ‘incredibly sad time’, they were ‘fully supportive’ of Jesy.
‘We love her very much and agree that it is so important that she does what is right for her mental health and well-being,’ they wrote, adding that they band would be continuing as a trio.
Why did she leave Little Mix and why did they fall out?
Last week Jesy appeared on the Great Company with Jamie Laing podcast, in which she admitted she initially wanted to leave the band after two years.
However, it was a conversation with her family, specifically her brother, that encouraged her to stick it out.
‘There was a time where I was like “oh, I want to leave” and I remember sitting down with my family…and it was actually because of my brother that in the end I stayed,’ she explained.
‘The first time I wanted to leave I remember I went home and we were kinda weighing up the [pros and cons]… and at that point we weren’t even like at our biggest.
‘We were, it had only been like two years, but we were still big. Everyone still knew who Little Mix were so it was like “if you leave now, what are you going to do?”.’
She then revealed: ‘I’m going to be completely honest about what he said, he said “just make as much money as you can, you’ve got a chance to really change your family’s life”. If somewhere in you can do this for another few years, do it, and then leave, because you’ll never get this opportunity again,’ she recalled.
In the past few years there’s been intense speculation that Jesy and her former bandmates had a massive falling out.
Although none of the four have ever directly addressed this, Perrie previously alluded to their friendship breakdown.
‘When you’ve been in that person’s life for many years and you’ve been through highs and lows, everything, all these experiences. And then poof, they’re gone…I struggled a lot with that. It’s really sad but sometimes these things happen. It’s a really horrible dynamic but you can’t force someone to be friends with you,’ she said during a podcast interview.
There was also a reported row between Jesy and Leigh-Anne, with DMs allegedly from her leaked leaked asking a social media star to do a video about Jesy ‘blackfishing’ in her video for Boyz.
When Leigh-Anne and Perrie announced they were both pregnant at the same time, fans were also quick to notice that Jesy did not speak out publicly to congratulate them.
In her new Amazon documentary, Jesy also spoke about specific details of her exit for the first time.
‘So, I’ve never spoken about this. Just give me a minute,’ she begins in one clip. ‘We were given the TV show The Search and we had to find the next big thing in music. Whoever the winner was, then would go be the support act for us on the last tour, which obviously no one knew it was the last tour ever. Now, because of lockdown, the tour’s not going to be for another two years. I just know I can’t last another two years,’ she explained.
Asked about what the atmosphere was like at the time, Jesy said it ‘shifted’. ‘There would be days when I would cry, there would be days when I was a really miserable b****. All of those little things eventually build up. And they do get to a boiling point.
‘I’ve been in lockdown, felt that happiness, and now I’ve been swarmed with this rush of anxiety and insecurities which I didn’t have when I was at home and in lockdown. I felt safe. I started then having panic attacks again. When I went back to work, I just had this fear of performing. For me to be terrified of performing was so abnormal, because when I was on stage, that was the place I felt the most confident.
‘I didn’t like recording anymore, which actually, if you now go listen back to songs, I’m hardly on any of them, because I’d be in the studio and I was just so down. I was like, “What’s the point?”. I was like, “I don’t care. I’ll go on the chorus”. Cause I just mentally checked out. It’s like my body was telling me “stop”. Like, “stop it now”.’
It was at this point Jesy decided she ‘couldn’t do this anymore’. She went on: ‘And then…listen, everyone’s gonna have their version of this story. I can only speak my truth of how I felt in this situation. And I basically just sat everyone down, and I just explained how I was feeling. I just felt like no one cared.
‘I remember one of the responses being, like..*eye roll* “Are you done now?” And I was like.. “Okay…”. She was like “Can I go now?”. And I just remember feeling like, “Woah…”. And that just made me feel really alone and like, there’s just no point. It’s like no one no one cares.’
In the documentary she also reveals for the first time that one of her bandmates had quit earlier in 2020 before she had.
‘I remember we got called in for a meeting. I knew it’s either gonna be something amazing or something really bad. And I just had this gut feeling it wasn’t gonna be good,’ she said.
‘One of the girls had decided that they didn’t want to be in the band anymore. And I remember feeling like my whole world just fell apart. It was just a really sad day, and me and Jade really cried.’
However, when asked to say which of the girls it was, she responded: ‘I don’t think that’s for me to say, because they still haven’t said. So that’s not for me to say.’
But Jesy said she ‘didn’t handle it very well’ at the time. ‘I was devastated, and I couldn’t really in that moment give her the understanding and support that she needed in that moment. And that sounds really selfish, because obviously, that person was really feeling and going through something. But at that time, I just remember thinking I need to mentally prepare myself now for Little Mix ending. So we planned our last tour.’
Who does she still speak to?
In an interview with The Guardian nearly a year after leaving the band, Jesy said she hadn’t been in contact with the other three girls, despite referring to them having previously been ‘like my sisters’.
‘No, not as much. Not now. I think we all need time. It’s a big thing that’s happened,’ when she was asked if they stayed in touch.
In the Amazon documentary, Jesy also confirms that she’d now not seen her former bandmates in nearly five years. Asked when the last time they all were together was, she replies: ‘It was when we were doing our own TV show called The Search. Yeah, that was the last time I saw them.’
In December 2021, Little Mix announced that they would be going on hiatus following the completion of their planned Confetti Tour in 2022 to ‘recharge’ and work on solo projects.
Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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