‘It’s massive alarm bells for me,’ Cherry shares while discussing Ed’s mental health (Picture: JMEnternational/Getty Images)
Ed Sheeran’s new documentary series, The Sum of It All, shines a spotlight on how the death of his best friend Jamal Edwards impacted him, when the music pioneer died last February at the age of 31.
In one of the episodes, Ed’s wife, Cherry Seaborn, opens up about her concerns for her husband, admitting that she senses ‘alarm bells’ over the fact that they’ve barely had a chance to discuss his mental health as he continues to experience grief months later.
The new four-part Disney Plus series delves into the Bad Habits musician’s life like never before, sharing behind-the-scenes footage of the 32-year-old hard at work and in his private life with Cherry, 30.
In 2022, the couple experienced huge hardship and loss, when after finding out that a tumour on Cherry’s arm was cancerous while she was six months’ pregnant, SBTV founder Jamal died unexpectedly.
In one of the instalments of the programme, Ed admits that he uses work as a coping mechanism, stating: ‘Any time that I’ve had times in my life where things are going badly, I tend to work more because it’s a distraction.’
Speaking in the docu-series, Cherry adds: ‘This year, there hasn’t been a single day where he’s not been working or performing or writing or doing promo. We’ve barely had a conversation this year about his mental health. I can see it and it’s massive alarm bells for me.’
The docu-series captures the moment Ed breaks down in tears during a gig months after Jamal’s death (Picture: Instagram)
In the lead-up to the release of his fifth studio album Subtract, the cameras reveal just how much work is going into the record, with Ed shooting a whopping 14 music videos back-to-back.
‘I’m filming all the videos in Suffolk, wake up every morning, I’m giving Lyra breakfast, and then get home, bath, bed, story,’ he shares, mentioning the eldest of his two daughters who he shares with Cherry.
‘The workload isn’t abnormal. I’ve always worked this much, it’s just a bit different. Because usually I’d get home from a shoot and pass out.’
However, Cherry points out that given how enormously busy Ed has been, there’s ‘no way’ he’s had adequate time to process his grief.
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‘The difficult thing about grief, everyone rallies around you at the start and you’re kind of expected to be grieving and to be sad and to not be coping. And then six months down the line, that kind of all falls off,’ she states.
‘Everything’s been so busy and there’s kind of an attitude, especially in Britain I think, of carrying on. I’m in a much better place from a processing perspective. I don’t think Ed is actually there yet.
‘There’s no way he’s had time to just sit and process and be at peace with things. He’s been too busy. He needs to stop. He needs to process – he hasn’t processed at all.’
In the docu-series, Ed is seen breaking down in tears over Cherry’s cancer diagnosis, emphasising how ‘horrible’ a month February was for them last year.
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‘The moment you find the worst thing has happened to someone you truly love, you feel like you’re drowning and can’t get out from under it,’ he says. ‘Just from that situation, all these songs came out.
‘It’s scary putting your deepest, darkest thoughts out into the world, but I think I’m super ready to just put Subtract out and move on from it emotionally.’
Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All is available to stream on Disney Plus.
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‘It’s massive alarm bells for me,’ Cherry shares while discussing Ed’s mental health.