Little Mix: Jesy Nelson recalls 'breaking point' moment and reveals why she left band
Former Little Mix star Jesy Nelson has spoken for the first time about why she decided to leave the band, revealing she reached "breaking point" during the video shoot for their hit Sweet Melody.
The singer quit the girl group in December after nine years of success, she told fans the fame and high pressure environment had "taken a toll" on her mental health.
Remaining members Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Perrie Edwards have continued with the band and supported Nelson in her decision to leave.
In an interview and cover shoot with Cosmopolitan magazine, Nelson revealed how during the Covid lockdown, spent with her family, she put "enormous" pressure on herself to lose weight ahead of the video shoot.
The 29-year-old suffered a panic attack on set because she did not like how she looked, prompting her to make the decision to leave the group.
The star has been on the receiving end of a torrent of social media abuse since the band rose to fame on the X-Factor in 2011.
The singer told the magazine: "The last music video we did was the breaking point. We’d been in lockdown, and (that had been) the first time I could have a break and be at home around people that I love.
"It was the happiest I’d ever felt, and I didn’t realise that until I went back to work. I immediately became a different person. I had anxiety.
"Whenever we had a music video, I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to try and lose weight."
Sweet Melody later became Little Mix’s fifth number one single and the band's final song as a four.
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"I have a fear of looking back on the camera. If I don’t like what I see, I find it so hard to be in front of the camera and feel amazing and perform," Nelson told Cosmopolitan.
"I’d been in lockdown, and I’d put on a bit of weight but I didn’t care. And (then) they said, 'You’ve got a music video in a couple of weeks,' and I just panicked. I went on this extreme diet, with bloody shakes, and tried to eat as little as possible.
"On the day of the Sweet Melody video I had a panic attack on set because 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."
Nelson has spoken openly about her mental health and revealed in a documentary about her experience that she had attempted to take her own life after abuse from online trolls.
The singer recalled filming the Sweet Melody video and "sobbing" in the dressing room, she told Cosmopolitan that was the "pinnacle point".
"I was like, 'I need to start taking care of myself now, because this isn’t healthy.'
"It wasn’t nice for the other three to be around someone who didn’t want to be there. So I took a break."
Little Mix formed have become one of the country’s biggest-selling girlbands since rising to fame on the X-Factor. The girl group left Simon Cowell’s Syco Music for the RCA label in November 2018.