Perrie Edwards has spoken about former bandmate Jesy Nelson after sharing the pair haven’t been pals since Jest unexpectedly quit the band in 2020
Perrie Edwards has made a rare comment about her former bandmate Jesy Nelson months after revealing she was “heartbroken” as the pair now “don’t talk – and haven’t for a long time”.
The Little Mix stars were once the best of pals, along with fellow bandmates Jade Thirlwall, 32, and Leigh-Anne Pinnock, 33. But when Jesy, 34, quit the band in 2020 citing mental health reasons, sadly it also marked the end of her friendship with 32-year-old Perrie.
At the time, Jesy told fans: “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 went on to share how she always felt like the ‘odd one out’ in the girl band and could no longer cope with being compared to her bandmates to the point she was having panic attacks on the sets of music videos.
At the time Jesy said: “I didn’t look how I wanted to look and I found it so hard to just be happy and enjoy myself. I looked at the other three and they were having the time of their life.
“I get so jealous, because I want to feel like that and enjoy it, because music is my passion. To have this dream and not be enjoying it because of what I look like, I knew wasn’t normal.”
But in a new interview on Celebs Go Dating expert Paul C Brunson’s ‘We Need To Talk’ podcast, Perrie spoke out about Jesy and their friendship at the start of their Little Mix journey back in 2011 – and how it gave her confidence in her own singing and performing abilities.
Speaking about the power of female friendships, the mum-of-one – who shares son Axel (who turns four later this week) with footballer fiancé Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain – shared: “I remember singing in front of Jesy for the first time, and she was like, ‘Oh my God, you are like Christina Aguilera.’
“And I was like ‘Whoa!’ She was like, ‘Listen to her sing. Listen to her sing!’ And she was gathering people around me like, ‘Sing, babe sing.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ And she just made me feel amazing.”
In an interview with Cosmopolitan last year, Perrie shared where their friendship is now – or lack of it. She said: “We don’t talk, and haven’t done for a long time. It’s really sad, it’s heartbreaking. But sometimes these things happen and people decide they want to part ways, and that’s absolutely fine. I would rather it went differently, but you can’t control how things go.”
And it isn’t only Jesy who has suffered with her mental health as Perrie revealed elsewhere in the new podcast how the condition agoraphobia meant she “could barely leave” her house towards the end of 2024.
She told host Paul: “I couldn’t leave the house in September. It was so intense. And I remember thinking, ‘This is not what I want for my life’. I want to get married. I want to have more kids. I want to have a successful career. I want to do all these things.
“And I feel like I’m really limited in my capabilities. My capacity was not big. It was really minuscule. With work and stuff, I thought, is it even worth it for me anymore? I don’t know if it is like, I don’t want to feel that way every time I leave the house and go to work.
Sharing things are now better, Perrie added: “I have therapy every Friday. We got to the point in one of the sessions, and I kept saying, like, sometimes when I’m feeling anxious and I’m in a car and I’m in traffic or I’m in certain situations, I start to feel a bit trapped.
“And we kind of discovered that my whole upbringing and my whole childhood were in a body that wasn’t working, and that must have felt like it was almost a little bit claustrophobic being in a body that wasn’t doing the right functions. But I couldn’t escape it, and I couldn’t help it.”
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