In a new interview, Sporty Spice revealed she nearly got kicked out of the Spice Girls before they had even released a single hit.
Melanie Chisholm, a.k.a. Mel C, now 52, told Louis Theroux on his podcast about an argument between her and Victoria Beckham in early 1996, before the group’s breakout hit “Wannabe” had even been released—one that nearly ended it all before it had even begun.
“I went into terror because I thought I was going to lose everything,” Chisholm told Theroux of the moment.
“You know, those dreams as a child, which now were a possibility, I might have f---ed it all up.”
The Spice Girls had been invited to the 1996 Brit Awards, despite not yet having released any music, and Chisholm decided to wear her hair down rather than in the high ponytail that would soon become her signature look.
“Nobody in the public knew us. But in the industry, you know, people had started talking and we were there... sitting on a table with Lenny Kravitz, which obviously, you know, we were these young girls. This was an amazing night. We had a great night. We had a few champagnes. We were really, you know, it was the Brits in the ’90s, right? Everyone was having fun,” she says.
But her bandmates were apparently annoyed with Chisholm over her hairstyle and had made comments about it throughout the evening. They were bothered she wasn’t sticking to the look they’d all agreed on for their personas.
“I just turned around and said to Victoria, ‘Oh, f--- off.’” she told Theroux.
Thinking that was the end of it, she went home to bed. The next morning, she told Theroux, “I was in a lot of trouble.”
Geri Halliwell had come over to the home Chisholm was sharing with fellow bandmate Melanie Brown, and they were both “disgusted.”
“They were just disgusted with my behavior,” Chisolm said, telling Theroux she hadn’t thought twice about it since she said it.
“I just woke up going, ‘Oh, that’s last night. It was fun.’ I had completely brushed off that situation, but obviously it had really affected people in a way I hadn’t realized. So I was in trouble.”
She was summoned by their manager, Simon Fuller—who went on to create American Idol—for a reckoning.
“I was told in no uncertain terms: If anything ever happened like that again, I would be gone.
“That completely freaked me out,” she continued. “One, because I didn’t realize I’d done anything that terribly bad. And two, because my actions may have led to me losing everything I’d ever wanted, you know? So it affected me... a lot.”
“Wannabe,” released in July 1996, reached No. 1 in 37 countries and launched the Spice Girls into the pop stratosphere.
Chisholm said that, as young women without media training, they were “thrown to the lions.” But that was 30 years ago, and according to Mel C, the girls are still close, and the Spice Girls have never disbanded.
“Geri’s back now... No one’s left,” she told Theroux.
“When I’m doing shows and stuff and people want to introduce me, when they say ‘former Spice Girl,’ I’m really offended. Because once a Spice Girl, always a Spice Girl.”
