In a new documentary about mental health, actress Sheridan Smith has admitted that she suffered seizures and was hospitalised after feeling ‘humiliated’ by a joke at a TV BAFTA awards ceremony. The star said she ‘went off the deep end’ after the 2016 awards ceremony during which Graham Norton made a comment about her drinking habits whilst she was sitting in the audience.
Sheridan, 39, had been nominated for a BAFTA for her role in The C Word that night but instead of celebrating was made a laughing stock. She remembers in the documentary, ‘Graham Norton was hosting and made a joke at my expense about me being a drunk...I was so humiliated. It's a room full of your peers, people you want to work with or have worked with. That night, for me, was like the final straw before my brain totally went off the deep end.’
The actress revealed that she had previously become addicted to anti-anxiety tablets, but that night decided she would stop taking them on her own. ‘I went to a hotel room and just stopped my tablets. Weirdly, a friend of mine had rung me and she came to the hotel. It's a miracle she did. It's like someone was looking out for me because what I didn't realise is that if you stop these tablets abruptly, you seizure. I seizured five times and got rushed to A&E and she's the one who got me breathing again.’
Fast forward four years and Sheridan is a new mother to son Billy who was born earlier this summer, and says she finally feels ‘contentment’ with her new family along with partner Jamie Horn. She adds in the documentary, called Becoming Mum, ‘At the start of my pregnancy, I'd just got myself to a good place and I thought, “Please don't let this be a turning point where things change for me”,’ she said. ‘That was my biggest worry.’
Prior to that humiliating night at the TV BAFTAs, Sheridan’s private life had long been doubling up as a juicy tabloid storyline. Her love life was fair game, and her romances and break ups played out in gossip columns, while it was plain to see Sheridan was struggling with issues far bigger than what was on the page. In March 2016 there had been the accusations that she was drunk whilst onstage in Funny Girl after a performance was abruptly terminated after just 15 minutes, and audience members suggested Sheridan had been slurring her words. A rep for the production said the show was ended because of ‘technical difficulties’ and Sheridan denied being drunk. Yet a few months later at the BAFTAs, host Graham Norton joked, ‘We’re all excited for a couple of drinks tonight. Or, as it’s known in theatrical circles, a few glasses of technical difficulties.’
It was, unsurprisingly, a devastating blow for Sheridan. At the beginning of 2016, as Sheridan was finding herself in the spotlight more than ever, both for her professional and private life, her beloved father Colin had been diagnosed with cancer (he sadly died in December that year). Her brother Julian died of the disease when she was eight years old. At the time she said she had pulled out of performances of Funny Girl because of the news, and wrote a tweet that said, ‘ You have no idea what I'm getting pressured into. They don't give a f*** about my dad!’ which was later deleted. Around the same time Sheridan also wrote a tweet alluding to suicide, ‘Going to the lesbian capital & suicide capital so I'll either come back with a girlfriend or not at all ;) x love ya's. See u soon I hope.’.
In the same way that the world loved to watch stars like Amy Winehouse (whom Sheridan has described as a ‘kindred spirit’) and Britney Spears fall from grace as a result of mental health or substance abuse issues, Sheridan became a ‘troubled national treasure’ whose every move was documented - yet no allowances made for what she was going through. People watched with horrified glee, disguised as compassion, as Sheridan fell apart. If we've learned anything from the treatment of troubled female stars like Sheridan, Amy and Caroline Flack, who died as a result of suicide in February this year, it's that headlines, public mockery and social media comments aren't just meaningless words.
Looking back, during an interview in 2018 Sheridan acknowledged that her drinking had become more of a problem around 2016. ‘I was running away from a lot, straight to the bottom of a bottle. I was trying to get out of my own head.’ Sheridan has also since admitted that she had her first panic attack whilst she was appearing in the Legally Blonde stage show on the West End in 2011. After that, she said, ‘I felt like a duck. Floating along fine but kicking like mad underneath. I know that sounds dramatic now. But the anxiety absolutely spiralled out of control.'
In the documentary, Sheridan says that since becoming a mother she finally feels like she's in a different chapter. ‘Now I've got this little family and I just feel, I can't explain it, like a contentment, a calm. Maybe I was looking for something in the wrong places and now I feel like I've found it in this little boy when I look in his eyes.’
Sheridan Smith: Becoming Mum airs on Tuesday 1 September at 9pm on ITV