The former Atomic Kitten star (45) said she panicked after the car crash appearance in which she repeatedly slurred her words
The former Atomic Kitten star (45) said she panicked after the car crash appearance in which she repeatedly slurred her words.
Later revealed to be a result of the medication she was taking for bipolar disorder, the interview was highly publicised at the time.
Kerry who was supposed to be promoting her MTV reality show, Crazy in Love, was on Celebrity Juice the night before and didn’t get home until very late.
Kerry during her 2008 interview
News in 90 Seconds,Wednesday, September 10
As a result, she explained on the Paul C Brunson’s We Need To Talk podcast she only then took her medication for her bipolar disorder.
“When you’ve had that medication the night before, the next day my speech can be a bit slow,” she said, adding: “To me I thought I sounded normal. It’s like a speech impediment.”
She recalled how ITV “was my home” and loved it there as it provided “stability”.
“But in that moment was sheer panic,” she recalled. “I think it’s still to this day, the number one car crash interview ever of all time until Prince Andrew did his. It’s like cheers for that love, you knocked me off the spot.”
She said she wanted to “kill myself” as she drove up to the house, as “my neighbours hated me”.
“There were camera crews and paparazzi,” she said. “And I kept thinking, ‘I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. I don’t know’, but I was the pinnacle of that kind of era of knockdown.”
During the interview, Kerry was asked by host Phillip Schofield if she was “ok” as she slurred her speech.
Phillip had asked her: “You don’t seem right to me sitting here now, your speech is a bit slurred, how are you feeling now?”
Kerry insisted that she was absolutely fine and that it was due to her medication.
However, she doesn’t blame Schofield or co-host Fearne Britton for asking her about her slurred speech, although “the way they went about it” was wrong, she thinks.
In the interview, Britton quizzed Kerry about addiction who was then forced to deny she had a problem with alcohol, while Schofield told her she seemed much different to her old self.
“At that time no one understood mental health issues,” Kerry reflected, having not revealed in 2008 she had bipolar disorder. Her therapist said at the time it was best not to be open about it as people wouldn’t understand.
Despite the distress, Kerry thinks the interview was “worth doing” as it opened up a conversation about mental health at a time when the subject was far more taboo.
But in a previous interview, Kerry previously reflected on how she soon became known more for her “downfalls” than career achievements.
Speaking on Slingo’s Getting Lippy Gossip Show she reflected: “After my This Morning interview you thought I’d killed somebody and I’m just like I don’t understand what it is I’ve done so wrong?
“I’ve had speech therapy and I’ve got a lazy tongue and with my ADHD and way I talk sometimes I don’t pronounce the words properly.
“’Then you put in the medication I was on and your speech is slurred and it’s like, ‘oh she’s this, she’s that’.”