Why Jesy Nelson’s pregnancy will NOT lead to a Little Mix reunion: GRANT TUCKER reveals how star felt ‘betrayed’ by ‘her three sisters’ – and why the bitter fallout shows no sign of thawing

When pop star Jesy Nelson announced her first pregnancy on Sunday, fans eagerly awaited messages of support from her three childhood best friends and former Little Mix bandmates.

Instead there was a wall of silence from Perrie Edwards, 31, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, 33, and Jade Thirlwall, 32.

The four girls, who had grown up together in front of The X Factor cameras and were ‘like sisters’, sensationally cut ties when Jesy left the band in December 2020.

Her departure, attributed at the time to the toll the band was taking on her mental health, sent fans into despair and ultimately marked the end of the most successful British girl band of the 21st century.

In the intervening years, any hope of a reunion has been repeatedly dashed by a bitter war of words between Jesy and her three former bandmates.

Jesy made an ill-fated bid for a solo career, but after a lackluster collaboration with US rapper Nicki Minaj, she was humiliatingly dropped from her Polydor record label in 2022 after they ‘couldn’t agree on new music’.

A source close to the singer says: ‘Jesy felt betrayed. Betrayed by the Little Mix girls she once called sisters. And betrayed by the record label that dropped her despite promising to make her a major superstar in the US.

‘The betrayal forced her to think about what she really wanted in life and that’s when she started thinking about starting a family for the first time. Her career could wait. The cutthroat nature of the business reminded her that family is more important.”

Now that dream has come true as the singer, 33, is expecting twins with her on-off ‘toyboy’ boyfriend of three years, musician Zion Foster, 26.

Jesy posted a Polaroid photo of her baby bump, with her partner’s loving hand on it, and wrote in the caption: “She’s eating for 3 now.”

Showbiz pals including Alan Carr and Amanda Holden showered Jesy with supportive messages, and even her ex-boyfriend, Love Islander Chris Hughes, congratulated her, saying: ‘Keep going girl.’

Friends say this is the ‘happy ending’ she has been waiting for after her traumatic fallout with her bandmates.

One said: ‘It marks the beginning of a new chapter. The past few years have not been kind to Jesy and fame has never brought her the happiness she longed for. Now she’s in love and has two babies on the way, and she couldn’t be happier.”

It’s quite a turn from the young woman who just four years ago categorically stated that she did not want children.

The former Essex barmaid said in 2021: ‘It’s just not in me. I think as a woman, [motherhood is] It’s either in you or it isn’t.

‘You either have that motherly feeling or you don’t, and I’ve never had that feeling before.’

Jesy grew up in Romford, East London, as part of a single-parent family with three siblings, but admitted she had ‘never thought about having a baby’.

The comments were made as the former Little Mix singer focused all her energy on her solo music career.

After leaving the band a year earlier, citing mental health issues, she told fans, “There comes a time in life when we have to reinvest in taking care of ourselves rather than focusing on making people happy other people, and I feel like now is the time to start that process.”

But going solo after Little Mix was a rude awakening for Jesy. Initially, she seemed destined for superstardom, picked up by Universal label Polydor, who promptly linked her to American rapper Nicki Minaj.

Yet their first collaboration, the song Boyz, became famous not for its success – it reached a relatively disappointing number four in the UK charts – but for the controversy it caused over accusations of ‘blackfishing’, the term used to refer to white people benefit from imitating stereotypical black characteristics.

In the video – alongside now-disgraced rapper P Diddy – Jesy is heavily tanned and wears her hair styled with wigs and braids. She is dressed in basketball shorts, with gold teeth, and sings lyrics that include wanting a boy who is “so good, so good, so damn taboo.”

The scandal reached its peak on the night of Monday, October 11, 2021 – an infamous night among Little Mix fans – when Jesy appeared on an Instagram live broadcast with her collaborator Minaj. The discussion touched on the blackfishing controversy, with influencer No Hun claiming that Jesy’s former black bandmate Leigh-Anne had helped fuel the outrage via private messages and that others from the band had added fuel to the fire online. This has never been proven.

Minaj defended Jesy and said her former bandmates were just ‘calling in’ [her] out” to help their “personal vendetta” against her, saying, “Don’t wait ten years after you’ve made millions from the person.”

The rapper also said that many women in America go tan and have big lips, and that she herself wore straight blonde hair and didn’t see the problem.

In an expletive-laden rant, Minaj added, “If you were in this woman’s group and you haven’t talked about this s*** in ten years, and as soon as you see it a video comes out with Nicki Minaj and Puffy, now you’re texting…

“Stop trying to hurt people and kill people’s lives and careers, this is the way people feed their families. Stop – if you want a solo career, girl, just say so. Only jealous people do things like this. It makes you a big jealous bozo. Just make these people miserable.”

Instead of defending her childhood friends, Jesy laughed when Nicki called her ex-bandmates ‘clowns’.

An insider said: ‘Leigh-Anne had just given birth to twins and was faced with an online pile-on instigated by one of the biggest musicians in America and her supposed girlfriend Jesy just sat there laughing. So don’t expect the girls from Little Mix to come over and congratulate Jesy now that she has children of her own.’

Leigh-Anne’s twins, with footballer husband Andre Gray, are now three, while Perrie has also become a mother – to son Axel, also three, with footballer fiance Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Little Mix, who still perform as a trio, were later asked for their thoughts on the blackfishing furore.

“Capitalizing aspects of blackness without having to endure the daily realities of the black experience is problematic and harmful to people of color,” Leigh-Anne said. “We believe it is absolutely not okay to use harmful stereotypes.”

Jade Thirlwall added: “We don’t really want to stand still because the three of us have so much to celebrate. We handled it the best way we could and got each other through it.”

Jesy later defended herself again in an interview. ‘I love black culture. I like black music. That’s all I know; it’s what I grew up with. I am very aware that I am a white British woman; I never said I wasn’t.’

Despite the attention the scandal attracted, the single underperformed commercially, dropping out of the UK charts after seven weeks and failing to chart at all despite Minaj’s appearance.

Polydor subsequently dropped Jesy from the label.

Leigh-Anne later revealed in her memoir that the remaining members of Little Mix had to seek therapy after Jesy’s ‘traumatic’ departure.

“The whole thing was abrupt and sad and then things got messy,” she wrote.

The singer described it as one of the most difficult moments of her career as she got caught up in the ‘horrific online row’.

‘At that moment it felt really terrible. No matter how many times I tried to avoid Instagram and Twitter, I kept seeing the comments and debates happening on each platform,” she confessed.

Since the debacle, Jesy has not spoken to the girls who were once her ‘sisters’ and does not follow them on social media. Instead, she and her boyfriend Zion split their time between her poolside home in Los Angeles and her mansion in Essex.

Yesterday, the expectant mother posted a video on Instagram thanking fans for their support. Rubbing her growing bump, she captioned the post: “Just wanted to thank you so much for all your lovely messages over the past 24 hours. We feel so overwhelmed by all the love and support.”

What didn’t go unnoticed was the vintage t-shirt she wore, which some fans thought was a subtle message about her feelings towards her time in Little Mix. It was emblazoned with the name of a 1990s hip-hop duo: Outkast.