Cheryl on Radio 1: "I would walk out to a wall of paparazzi and put on a smile but inside I was dying."

07 July 2019 - Press release

Cheryl spoke about putting on a brave face for the paps and about the years she spent struggling with anxiety in an interview on BBC Radio 1’s Life Hacks with Cel Spellman and Katie Thistleton. She also spoke about online trolls, calling them ‘angry, sad’ people, and hinted at the possibility of a new album.

On putting on a brave face:

“One of the problems I think with social media is that people put on this face and this façade of how they are. I would walk out to a wall of paparazzi and put on a smile but inside I was dying. I think what happens then is everyone is looking around like, ‘why does everyone seem so good and having a good time in a happy place and I feel rubbish?’ And that’s not helpful. So if people would just be a bit more open and honest with how they’re feeling, I think we could all help each other.”

On her own anxiety:

“I think I actually walked through the fire to be honest. I struggled for so long in silence, I wouldn’t even open up to friends and family. I was very closed. I actually had therapy for a year. I struggled for so many years with anxiety and in my own head, thinking things… I didn’t want that to be happening when I was trying to focus on raising a child. It felt like my responsibilities shifted and my priorities changed and I needed to be settled in my own head to be able to give him the best that I could possibly give him.”

On trolls:

“At one point during my teens and my 20s it was horrible. You can’t believe people think those things about you, you can’t believe people feel those things about you, you can’t believe people believe the things they read about you.

If someone has the time and the mental capacity to want to go on an article and write a sentence about somebody, you’ve got to be quite an angry sad person. They’re not okay. It’s more a reflection than it is a truth - it’s how they feel about themselves or how they perceive things to be. These people don’t know you. They have no idea about you as a person or what’s really going on. They can say they don’t like your shoes or they don’t like your hair - who cares?”

On a potential new album:

“I’ve got material. I just want to see how the singles land and if people are enjoying the music and maybe do some intimate gigs and stuff first.”