Jesy Nelson is open to a Little Mix reunion.
The former member of the BRIT Award-winning girl group – which also featured Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Perrie Edwards, and Jade Thirlwall – quit Little Mix in December 2020 because of the toll being in the band took on her mental health.
The Black Magic hitmakers have been on indefinite hiatus since their Confetti tour ended in 2022, and have focused on their respective solo endeavours.
Jesy insists that, despite everything, she has always seen the girls as her “sisters” and hopes they can reconcile in the future.
She told The Sun: “We’re all mums now and I can’t speak on behalf of them, but I’d like to think that we probably see things a lot differently now. I think you do, just as you get older anyway, but you know, never say never. I have so much love for them and always will. So never say never [to a reconciliation].”
She added: “I’ve never spoken horrendously about Little Mix. Even though I’ve had crappy times in terms of my mental health and what being in the band did to me, our sisterhood, my relationship that I had with them and the years I did spend with them were amazing.
“That’s the reason why Little Mix were so successful because we genuinely were like sisters at one point, we were genuinely best friends.”
Jade said last year that she wished Jesy’s departure from Little Mix had been “handled differently”.
The 33-year-old star said her exit was “incredibly painful” for the trio to deal with, and it took “a lot” of “therapy” to move on.
She told The Guardian newspaper: “It was incredibly painful. For all of us that was the worst part, and it’s taken a lot of understanding and therapy and all those things to work out how that can happen when you’ve devoted so much time and love to someone.
“My biggest wish for that whole period is that it was handled differently. I just would’ve loved us to all sit and chat about it.”
Jade went on to add: “We absolutely adored Jesy like family – it wasn’t just work. We all wanted to protect her, because we understood that trauma there and what she’d been through.
“I think we handled it as best as we could … Obviously we don’t speak any more, and things happened that I don’t think should have, but I still do feel an element of protection towards Jesy.
“Nobody fully understands how complex the whole thing was – it wasn’t just a case of someone wanting to leave. Numerous things built up in the last year and in the back of my mind I knew it was going to happen. I’d just like for it to have happened in a … better way.”
Perrie previously admitted she’s still devastated about the loss of her friendship with Jesy.
During an appearance on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, she explained that she had written a song about it.
The 32-year-old star said: “When you have been in that person’s life for years, and they have had your back, and you have been through highs, lows, everything and all of these experiences, it’s a wild ride, but you are in it together, and then poof, they’re gone …
“That is hard to deal with. I struggled a lot with that. It was really sad, but at the same time, these things happen, and it makes you think, ‘Do we try to rectify the situation? Do I reach out? I feel like I should just stay away.’ It’s a really horrible dynamic to be in.
“You can’t force somebody to be friends with you. If they don’t want to be friends, they don’t want to be friends. But, yes, it’s really hard.”