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Melanie “Mel B.” Brown is opening up about a moment where she almost took her own life after returning from dinner in the U.K. with then-husband Stephen Belafonte.
“So I was in the U.K. and my, I guess publicity was right up there,” Brown, 48, recalled in a preview clip from the Thursday, March 28, episode of The Drew Barrymore Show. “So the more press and the more attention I got, the worse the abuse got because he felt like he was losing control over me, and I just did not want to be there at all, and I took the pills.”
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The America’s Got Talent: Fantasy League judge noted that the instant she swallowed the pills she regretted it, but Belafonte, now 49, didn’t care to help her.
“I realized what I did, and I’m like, ‘You know what? No, I want to live,” she recalled. “’So I told him, ‘Look, I’ve done something really silly’ and he said, ‘So?’
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This isn’t the first time the Spice Girl has spoken about the harrowing incident. Brown shed more light on her mental health in her 2018 memoir, Brutally Honest, admitting she “took nearly 200 aspirin pills” in an attempt to escape her marriage to Belafonte.
“I’ll be wearing a beautiful dress, my hair and make-up will be perfect. But if you want the absolute truth, I don’t care about any of it. My life is a mess and I want out,” she wrote. “Behind the glitter of fame, I felt emotionally battered, estranged from my family. I felt ugly and detested by the very man who once promised to love and protect me, my husband and manager Stephen.”
The Drew Barrymore Show/Ash Bean
The singer also claimed that after 10 years of marriage, Belafonte was threatening to destroy her career and family with a library of sex tapes.
While on the “All Rise” podcast in December 2018, Belafonte addressed the claims, saying, “Did my wife and I ever have sex and have a phone … We don’t have big cameras and lighting and editing. Have we ever taken an intimate moment and filmed it with a camera? Yes.”
He added, “There’s been so many media reports, so many stories, so many weird allegations. I wanted to kind of just take everybody from a to z a to kind of get a, a clearer understanding of what really happened beside all the, you know, the lies that my ex has been telling to every person that will listen and claiming to be this, this victim. I don’t love Mel. I wish her the best, but I definitely don’t love Mel. What she did. How she tore this family apart and how she went and put out these horrific allegations just to fold, to fold.”
Brown filed for divorce from Belafonte in March 2017. The pair share 12-year-old daughter Madison.
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After years of unhappiness, Brown has now found her happily ever after. She got engaged to hairstylist Rory McPhee in October 2022 after dating him for three years.
“I didn’t believe in love and trust because I’d had 10 years of such bad abuse that when I came out of that, I was like, I don’t want a relationship,” Brown exclusively told Us Weekly in January 2024. “I was so broken down in my self-esteem, my confidence [and] I really had to build myself up.”
She continued, “To think of sharing myself again with anybody else was too scary for me, but Rory is a family friend, so I already have that trust and that foundation laid.”
The mom of three — who also shares daughter Phoenix, 24, with ex-husband Jimmy Gulzar, and daughter Angel, 16, with Eddie Murphy — noted that things with McPhee feel different than her previous relationships.
“It just felt safe, right and real, even though many times I went, ‘No, I don’t want a relationship,” she said, “I can’t handle it.’”
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
Tune in to CBS at 9:00 a.m/ ET on Wednesday, March 28, to see Brown’s full interview on The Drew Barrymore Show.
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