Tulisa Contostavlos has revealed she urged ITV to ‘take her off camera’ in the days after her I’m A Celebrity departure because she was having a ‘breakdown’.
The N-Dubz singer, 36, made a swift exit from Australia within days of being voted out of the Jungle, having deleted all traces of her appearance on the ITV show from her Instagram.
Tulisa left fans wondering why she suddenly left Australia and chose not to appear in the Coming Out show alongside her campmates.
She later took to her Instagram to address the speculation about her sudden departure to say she had become ‘overwhelmed’ by the whole thing.
In part two of Paul C Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast, Tulisa opened up on how she really felt in the hours after she was voted out of the show.
She said: ‘When I came out, I began to cry when I had the first moment to myself.
Tulisa Contostavlos, 36, has revealed she urged ITV to ‘take her off camera’ in the days after her I’m A Celebrity departure because she was having a ‘breakdown’
The N-Dubz singer made a swift exit from Australia within days of being voted out of the Jungle, having deleted all traces of her appearance on the ITV show from her Instagram
‘And the first thing I did when I spoke to my team, they said ‘”What’s wrong?”
‘And I said “Please don’t put me back on camera. I need to be off now, too much. I’m really proud of myself, but I pushed myself too far, too soon, I need to go home”.’
She added: ‘You want me to be there out of principle? When I’m having a breakdown right now? No, I need to go home and process this.
‘I guess in a way I’m blessed to be that person to say if my mind isn’t feeling healthy, I’m going to take care of myself. I’m not going to push myself over any edges. I need to take care of myself, I need to protect me.’
Finally revealing why she chose to archive all of her pictures from I’m A Celebrity on her Instagram when she came out of the jungle, Tulisa said: ‘I did delete everything.
‘I came out and the same night I was having a cry I was like I’m not going back on camera.
‘I was looking through my socials and it was just all me and I was in flip out mode. I just wanted it all gone and to go home and process things.
‘I wouldn’t say I’ve processed it all. I’m at like 70 percent right now. For me to be in the public eye I need to do things that are a bit more hard hitting, things like this [the podcast]. Just keeping it 100% real.
‘If I can be in the public eye and it’s like that, then I can do it.’
In part one of Paul’s podcast, Tulisa opened up on the struggles she faced with her mental health both in the jungle and following her exit, with the star admitting that she struggled to gleefully mingle with the ‘happy campers’ while she was ‘sat crying in her hotel room’.
Tulisa also told of the moment she almost quit the show, with the singer left in tears and struggling to breathe during a harrowing anxiety attack that wasn’t shown onscreen.
Explaining the battles she faced that viewers were not privy to, Tulisa said: ‘Some of the things you didn’t see, I had night terrors for the first four days. I was waking up out of my sleep, and I was having anxiety attacks.
‘Those parts, not everyone knows, so it wasn’t completely smooth sailing for me at all, but I have a great poker face.
‘I really can turn it on and especially when I’m faced with adversity. The last thing I wanted to do was go in there and be the hot mess. So if anything, I’m going to be the biggest soldier there is.
‘So as soon as I’m set with a task and I’m going in and jumping out of a plane, I’m going to look like a warrior, because that is what I do. I might sit and cry under the sleeping bag, that’s also a part of who I am.’
Opening up on a particular attack that almost forced her to leave the show early, Tulisa went on: ‘I mean, I did cry on the VT at one point, but I definitely had an anxiety attack off-camera.
‘I went to the smoking area to do it and even then, I didn’t want them to know that I was having an anxiety attack, so I was trying to bring down my heart rate, literally through my nose.
‘I was like, “Okay, get the heart rate down. Get the heart rate down”. I wanted to leave that day. I was like, ‘I can’t do this but it’s not what I came here for.
‘I came here to stick it out and do whatever I have to do”. And there were lots of amazing moments, really joyful moments, thanks to the people. The people made those moments.’
Since being the third to be evicted from the jungle as subsequently jetting back to the UK, Tulisa had told how she felt ‘introvert-overload’ upon heading back to reality, admitting she was hyperventilating and crying.
It’s understandable that Tulisa is wary of being in the public eye, having been involved in several scandals – including a drug sting by The Sun’s notorious Fake Sheikh.
During her chat with Paul, she went into further detail about how her introversion affected her in camp, as well as how it impacted her time after her exit during the period where evicted campmates spend time with the loved ones of other campmates and join them to greet the newly-evicted stars at their plush Gold Coast hotel.
Tulisa explained: ‘I am a massive introvert. I was really getting a little bit overwhelmed in there, so I was probably the least around in camp. I would go and remove myself and go for walks or go and hide in the dunny. I spent 90% of my time alone.
‘The agoraphobia and being alone for so long, I got super overwhelmed being around so many people. They could see that, and they were really understanding about that. They had jokes like, “She’s gone to the Airbnb. She’ll be back.”
‘When I came out, I think actually the biggest thing that tipped me over the edge was introvert overload. I had pushed myself into doing this and I was ready to overcome all the fears and being in the spotlight, but being watched consistently, so many hours a day, nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, feeling so exposed. Everyone can see me, and also this underlying fear – probably irrational – of being watched.’
She went on to say that the feeling of being watched all the time reminded her of being ‘under surveillance’ by Mazher Mahmood, also known as the Fake Sheik, a then journalist for the Sun on Sunday tricked her into giving him a contact from which he bought £800 worth of cocaine.
She noted that while everyone else at the hotel were ‘happy campers’, her past experience weighed heavy on her and she found it difficult to interact with others and pretend she was ok.
She shared: ‘I did what I signed up for, but I came out, I processed, I was feeling the way I was feeling. There’s 11 other really happy campers there that are really happy to be there, happy to have the holiday and do it all with energy, with smiles, and you have someone that’s sat crying in their hotel room.
‘In this current age that we live in, it’s like, “You want me to be there out of principle? When I’m having a breakdown right now?
‘I need to go home and process this. If other people are not having the same experience as me, they haven’t had the same experiences in the past and they’re all current people that are doing radios or they’re on television. This is very much the norm for them”. This, for me, was a psychological experiment, for myself.’
