Perrie Edwards Opens Up About 'Heartbreaking' Rift With Jesy Nelson

Perrie Edwards has admitted she feels “really sad” about how things turned out between herself and former Little Mix star Jesy Nelson.

The pair were bandmates for almost a decade, until Jesy announced in 2020 that she would be leaving the group.

While initially the former four-piece insisted that Jesy’s departure was an amicable one, this appeared not to be the case as time went on, with Perrie telling Cosmopolitan that she and the Boyz singer haven’t spoken “for a long time”.

She explained: “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.’”

However, Perrie insisted that her Little Mix days were “the happiest time of my life”.

“All we did was laugh together, banter together, cry together,” she recalled. “It was so much fun. Yes we went through a lot in those 10 years, but we had each other.”

Last month, Perrie sparked speculation that a song on her debut solo album could be about Jesy.

Speaking on Zach Sang’s YouTube show, she spoke about an unreleased song about “a friendship that I no longer have”, admitting it’s one she “can’t even listen to without crying”.

“You have so much love for that person, it could be a family member, a best friend, just anything… if you really, really love that person and then they’re not there in your life anymore, it’s really difficult.”

Perrie went on to say the song is about “how no matter what, we just didn’t see eye to eye”.

“I saw red, you saw blue. I do this, you do that,” she continued. “There was no communicating there. It’s a really sad song, though. When I hear it. Because I hope one day we can connect again, and it can be good. But right now, it’s just not. It wasn’t good.”

Jesy announced in 2020 that she was leaving Little Mix, telling fans that “being in the band” was impacting her mental health.

“I find the constant pressure of being in a girl group and living up to expectations very hard,” she said at the time.

A year later, Jesy released her debut solo single Boyz, which was met with controversy due to accusations of Blackfishing, and around this time, reports claimed that her ex-bandmates had all unfollowed Jesy on social media. 

However, unverified leaked DMs reportedly sent by Leigh-Anne Pinnock to a TikTok user later suggested that Jesy had, in fact, blocked the trio.

These alleged messages were never verified, nor did Leigh-Anne ever comment on them directly, but they did end up forming a major part of the conversation during an ill-fated Instagram live-stream Jesy took part in with her former collaborator Nicki Minaj, in which the rapper branded Leigh-Anne a “fucking clown” and accused her of being “jealous” of Jesy.

During a subsequent interview with The Sunday Telegraph, the remaining members of Little Mix admitted they “don’t really want to dwell” on the fall-out, with Jade Thirlwall noting: “We’ve dealt with it in the best way that we know how, and got each other through it.”

Jesy also confirmed that she and the trio “are not talking anymore”.

“It is sad but honestly there is no bad blood from my side,” she told Graham Norton after the live-stream debacle. “I still love them to pieces and genuinely wish them all the best.

“I loved my time with them, and we’ve got the most incredible memories together… it’s just one of those things which needs to take time, so who knows.”