Ferne McCann opens up on why her TOWIE roots led to depression – and how she’s bounced back
She’s come a long way since shooting to fame on The Only Way Is Essex in 2013 – going on to reach the final of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2015 and winning Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2022. Ferne McCann also landed her own reality show, documenting her journey into motherhood after welcoming daughters Sunday, seven, and Finty, one.
But after deciding to end her show, My Family & Me (previously titled First Time Mum) after 13 series, the 34-year-old has now reflected on her time as a reality star and the impact it had on her mental health.
She admitted, ‘I always wanted to perform – 10-year-old me wanted to be an actress in Hollywood. I had to settle for Essex and being a reality star! I really wanted to be famous, I wanted to be out there.’
And she credits her friendship with former best pals Sam Faiers and Billie Shepherd – who were original cast members of TOWIE – for opening the door for her. Ferne was a childhood best friend of Billie, 35, and her sister Sam, 34, even being described as a ‘very close family member’ by the siblings’ mum Suzie. They later spectacularly fell out over a leaked voice notes scandal when Ferne was exposed for letting rip in a foul-mouthed tirade at Sam.
‘My best friends were doing TOWIE and I was like, “I want to do something like this, I want a little bit of what they’ve got,”’ Ferne explained. ‘I feel like I was hungry for it and then, come TOWIE, it was like the perfect storm because it was young fame-hungry people.
‘The premise of that show was to create drama and to get airtime. I was a B character. You had A characters, and the storylines were about them. I went through this weird time of blurred lines – they call it “scripted reality” and it really was. It was a weird time for me because I was showing up as this real bitchy character that wasn’t me. I don’t like confrontation, that’s a real misconception of me.’
And Ferne says it is her experience as a ‘B character’ on TOWIE that first had a negative impact on her mental health.
‘Everyone was on social media talking about how I looked and behaved, it was hard. That was the first experience of when I started to struggle with my mental health. I was depressed on that show. I have no regrets, I really don’t, but I was so down. I was partying, having to have arguments with people, and I would literally just cry. I’d get into this drama and then I’d just cry. Then seeing what your real friends would say about you on the show, the British tabloids and everybody having an opinion, I really struggled with that.
‘It was savage, it was intense, it was really hard. I was so down and thinking, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” I prayed and manifested to get out of the situation. This is not me slamming the show – I have so many amazing memories and it’s what started my career – but it was tough. But I remember the psych saying, “Have you thought about anti-depressants?” I’m not against that and there’s a place for them but I was just like, “How is that the first thing?”'
Ferne, who is now happily engaged to businessman Lorri Haines – who she built her successful mental health and wellbeing app Shoorah with – says that leaving TOWIE to participate in I’m A Celebrity! was ‘when my life completely turned around’.
She added, ‘It was such a springboard for me because it’s a fly-on-the-wall type show and people could see me being myself and saw I was quite a nice person, and it led on to all the other shows I’ve done.’
But things haven’t always stayed plain sailing since leaving the drama of TOWIE behind, saying her most recent reality show – this year’s Dancing On Ice – was ‘a mini trauma in itself’.
And in 2022, her friendship with Sam and Billie came crashing down after the voice note scandal, where Ferne was heard dubbing Sam a ‘fat c**t’ and a ‘narcissistic b**ch’. Ferne later apologised for what she had been heard saying, but claimed her comments had been ‘manipulated, edited and taken entirely out of context’.
Ferne now says, ‘I’ve been through stuff publicly and I was very low a few times actually. I had anxiety, [I was] having suicidal thoughts at one stage in my life. I’ve had seven years of therapy. It was such a secret of mine that I was going to a therapist.
‘As a celebrity, especially, it’s like you’ve gone through a breakdown and now you’ve got to see a therapist, but I guess I did have a breakdown. I needed it and it was the best decision I’ve ever made because now, they say people can’t change but I really feel like a changed person.’
Ferne McCann spoke to The Trouble Club.
