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“They told me it wasn’t recorded, and it was.”Ī few weeks later, the clip of Nelson in tears over “a few nasty comments” was broadcast before Little Mix’s performance, the reality TV playbook of “sad piano” switching to upbeat pop music when Thirlwall comforts her: an uplifting moment of girl power. A couple of days later, she was asked to explain again – on camera. Photograph: Rahul Bhatt/BBC/October FilmsĪt about 1am, a member of The X Factor team found Nelson crying alone and asked why she was so upset. Jesy Nelson with Liz Ritchie in the forthcoming BBC documentary Odd One Out.

I remember ringing my mum and saying: ‘Mum, I want to go home, I don’t want to do it.’” People were saying my face was deformed – just the most horrific things. “I felt a rush of anxiety, because I’d never experienced anything like that in my life.

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But nearly every comment was about the way I looked: ‘She’s a fat ugly rat’ ‘How has she got in this girl group?’ ‘How is the fat one in this?’” She remembers the air being thick with tension – “because no one knew what to do or how to react”. “I thought it would be people giving their opinion on our performance. That night, off-camera, the contestants gathered to watch themselves on YouTube.

It was “the best feeling in the world”, said Nelson through happy tears on stage. On the first live show 12 weeks in, Little Mix (then Rhythmix – the name was changed later) performed Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass to gushing praise from judges Louis Walsh, Gary Barlow and their mentor Tulisa Contostavlos. She remembers being wowed when all the contestants were given new Samsung phones and told to get on Twitter to build their fanbase.

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In fact, that eighth series was the first where applicants could upload their audition videos to YouTube Nelson didn’t even know what YouTube was. In mid-2011, she auditioned for The X Factor as a solo entrant, and was eventually placed in a group with three others: Pinnock, Perrie Edwards and Jade Thirlwall, all aged between 18 and 20.īack then, social media was not as inextricably linked with reality TV as it is now. “I didn’t really have any reason to not be confident,” she says. Within minutes of sitting down, she says that, had she known the consequences of appearing on The X Factor, she wouldn’t have done it: “I don’t think anything is worth your happiness, and it was a lot of my life that I won’t get back.”Īs a child growing up in Romford, Essex, Nelson was intent on becoming a performer, be it singing, dancing or acting. Photograph: Ken McKay/Talkback Thames/Rex/Shutterstock On The X Factor in 2011: (from left) Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Perrie Edwards and Jesy Nelson. It is the eighth anniversary of her X Factor debut and #8YearsofLittleMix has been trending on Twitter all morning, thanks to their fans, the “Mixers”. When we meet in a corner of BBC Broadcasting House in central London, Nelson, now 28, is friendly and glamorous, dressed in a double-breasted tangerine suit. Before shooting it, she says, she had never spoken publicly about her struggles in the spotlight. The downward spiral and her eventual, slow recovery are the focus of an intensely personal BBC Three documentary, Jesy Nelson: Odd One Out. Within two years of the finale, she had depression and an eating disorder and had attempted suicide. Little Mix went on to become the biggest British girl group since the Spice Girls, but Nelson was consumed by the trolling and abuse on social media. “I had Leigh-Anne in my room being like: ‘This is the best!’ and I was like: ‘No, this isn’t.’” “I should have been on cloud nine,” she says. You do not deserve to be in this girl band, you deserve to die.” It read: “You are the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my life. When Little Mix were crowned, the first Facebook message she saw was from a stranger.