When Jesy Nelson won The X Factor along with her bandmates Little Mix back in 2011, she didn’t rush out to celebrate. Instead, the first thing she did was hire a personal trainer.
It was the early days of social media, but the trolls were just as vicious. Cruel online commenters told Jesy, then just 20, she was the ‘ugliest thing’ and ‘deserved to die’ because she was curvier than her bandmates Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Ann Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall. It all got too much for the Essex-born Jesy.
I recall from that time how much her bandmates enjoyed flaunting their toned midriffs in revealing crop tops, while Jesy like to cover up. The abuse, she later said, led to her taking an overdose.
The truth is that Jesy has never found fame easy. She had instantly wowed X Factor judges Simon Cowell and Tulisa Contostavlos at her audition – singing Bust Your Windows by the American R’n’B singer Jazmine Sullivan. Weeks later, following the recent chart-topping success of his boyband One Direction, Simon created a girl-group, placing Jesy alongside Geordie friends Perrie and Jade, and Leigh-Anne.
And that was where the problems began. One source who was working on the X Factor at the time recalls how Jesy would alternate between ‘cowering away’ from the limelight and being loud and brash as she struggled to fit in with the other girls, who all seemed more confident.
Indeed, when I interviewed Little Mix during their time on the ITV show, it was Leigh-Ann and Perrie who did almost all the talking. Jesy was quiet and struck me as uncomfortable. She was vibrant and beautiful but a part of me felt sorry for her – she seemed to have been thrust into a world to which she was ill-suited.
‘The other girls were skinny,’ says a source who knew them at the time. ‘Jesy had the curves – she was and still is beautiful. And she wanted fame, she wanted to be a star. But looking back now, I wonder if the best thing for her would have been to have avoided those auditions.
‘There was something about being in Little Mix that she seemed to struggle with. The fame was crazy, everyone had their opinion. Maybe it would have been best if she had never been famous at all.’
Little Mix won The X Factor in 2011 and went on to become one of the show’s most successful groups – but Jesy struggled with the fame that came with it. Left to right: Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jesy Nelson, Perrie Edwards and Jade Thirlwall
Jesy with her twin girls Ocean Jade and Story Monroe Nelson-Foster. She recently revealed her children, born prematurely, have been diagnosed with the genetic disease spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and will probably never walk
And famous they certainly were. Little Mix are surely the most successful act to have won The X Factor (One Direction came third in 2010). Jesy and the other girls achieved a total of over 15 billion streams on Spotify, performing in more than 20 countries and selling three million concert tickets.
The truth is that Jesy had wanted to be famous long before her X Factor audition. As a teenager, she had attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School in central London and landed non-speaking roles in both the 2002 movie About a Boy and Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire three years later.
But her spell in the limelight has not always been easy. In her brave 2019 BBC documentary Odd One Out, Jesy revealed the toll that severe online bullying had taken on her mental health, leading to that suicide attempt.
Surely nothing, however, compares with the ordeal Jesy has suffered in recent months, following the desperately sad revelation that her beloved seven-month-old daughters Ocean Jade and Story Monroe Nelson-Foster suffer from the genetic disease spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The rare neuromuscular condition causes progressive weakness and wasting – and Jesy has said her twin girls may never walk.
The star, who gave birth to the babies prematurely, explained on Sunday that the condition ‘affects every muscle down to the legs, arms, breathing and swallowing’, adding: ‘Over time, it kills the muscles in the body. If it’s not treated in time, your baby’s life expectancy will not make it past the age of two.’
In her typically tough way, Jesy, 34, insisted in an emotional Instagram video that her daughters will ‘defy all the odds’ and that with the right help ‘they will fight this’.
Jesy, who is in a relationship with musician Zion Foster, went on: ‘The last few months have been the most heartbreaking of my life. I almost feel like I am grieving a life I thought I was going to have with my children.’
Her announcement prompted an outpouring of support, and has also raised awareness of SMA. Even her ex-boyfriend, Love Island heartthrob Chris Hughes, has spoken out. Chris, who dated Jesy from early 2019 until their split in April 2020, shared a clip of Jesy’s interview with This Morning hosts Cat Deeley, 49, and Ben Shephard, 51, on Instagram on Wednesday evening, writing: ‘Heartbreaking, what an amazing human.’
In an emotional Instagram video, Jesy insisted that her daughters will ‘defy all the odds’ and that with the right help ‘they will fight this’
Jesy with her twins and partner Zion Foster. The couple have been together since 2022
However, fans have noted that Jesy’s former Little Mix colleagues have remained silent about her plight. Though she spent almost a decade living alongside them, jetting across the world as they became the most successful British female band since the Spice Girls, the trio have chosen not to comment – at least for now.
In 2020 Jesy quit the band, saying that it had taken a toll on her mental health and that she found the constant pressure of being in a girl group and living up to expectations ‘very hard’. She also took a subtle swipe at Perrie, Leigh-Ann and Jade, saying: ‘I need to spend some time with the people I love, doing things that make me happy.’
‘Nothing ever seems to go smoothly for Jesy,’ says one associate of hers. ‘It is devastating to watch. She always seemed the odd one out, even when the band were at the height of their fame. The girls were much more “posey”. There was a lot of sneering.
‘She used to be bubbly and happy – then The X Factor happened and Little Mix came along and that all changed. She struggled so much. When she left, she hoped it would be better.’
Only it wasn’t. In 2021 Leigh-Ann accused her former friend Jesy of ‘blackfishing’ (appropriating black culture) in the music video for her solo hit Boyz. In short, the row – which took place following the Black Lives Matter protests that consumed the world during the Covid pandemic – centred on whether or not Jesy, who is white, had ‘pretended’ to be black or mixed-race in the video, having braided her hair, worn a gold grille on her teeth and rapped about wanting a boy who’s ‘so hood’.
It blew up into one of the biggest showbiz scandals of the year, with allies of Leigh-Ann, Perrie and Jade stirring up a huge media backlash against Jesy – even as global superstar Nicki Minaj, who is black, rushed to defend her, calling Jesy’s former bandmates ‘jealous clowns’.
At the time, I recall being told that her ex-bandmates were keen to see Jesy ‘cancelled’ for good. ‘It felt like a real ganging-up situation,’ says my source. ‘Jesy was on her own. After all those years together, they really turned and it became a vicious one-sided briefing war.’
Today, there is more love than ever for Jesy both inside the showbusiness industry and out of it.
Friends of hers tell me that the support we don’t know about behind the scenes for her and her daughters has been ‘absolutely immense’.
‘She has been able to raise the awareness of this horrible condition and that is very, very important to her,’ says one colleague of hers.
‘Jesy’s fame has meant that she has a voice to help her girls and other babies.’
So maybe, 15 years on from her first performance in front of Cowell and his fellow judges, life in the limelight might just have been worth it.
