Danniella Westbrook, most renowned for her role in EastEnders, opened up about the heartbreak she endured following her split with ex-East 16 star Brian Harvey. The duo, who had their first stint as a couple during their teenage years in the early '90s, managed to maintain a friendly rapport over the years.
They even came together in 2015 for a child abuse campaign, only to seemingly fall out during a highly publicised social media argument in 2021. Reflecting on their original parting in 1995 after a romance that lasted four years, Westbrook described it as the beginning of a downwards spiral in her personal life.
In the Louis Theroux's new pop music documentary series 'Boybands Forever', Westbrook divulged tumultuous details of her and Harvey's relationship. According to her, Brian's then-manager Tom Watkins had cautioned her against continuing their liaison, ominously predicting it "wouldn't end well" and reminding her "he always wins".
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Despite Tom Watkins' stark premonitions, Danniella and Brian persevered, attempting to navigate through intense media attention shadowing their relationship. Westbrook recounted how they would still be seen at star-studded events together, yet privately, their eventual break up was brewing and seemed unstoppable.
Sharing her pain on the three-part BBC documentary, the actress, now 51, revealed: "It went from being happy and being in love to everything being so stressful. I think it was inevitable that we were going to split which subsequently sent me over the edge. I made myself really ill. I took more and more drugs, I'd had enough. I was broken.", reports the Mirror.
East 17 enjoyed success with five studio albums and eighteen singles before their split in 1997, following Brian's dismissal for seemingly endorsing ecstasy use during a radio interview. Danniella has looked back on their time together, once describing it as "the perfect life".
She reminisced in a 2002 interview with The Observer: "It was all fast cars, flashy clothes, glamorous guys, and a lovely apartment. I had a pop star boyfriend, and for a brief moment, it felt like the perfect life. But I was constantly out in clubs, surrounded by people using coke, and I thought it looked glamorous-when, in reality, it was anything but. I was young, naïve, and easily influenced. The original 'dumb blonde.'"
As the years of partying wore on, Danniella told the Mirror that she began to lose her sense of self, saying: "About halfway through, I realized I was losing my identity. I'd left my career behind because he wanted me to, and I was no longer 'Danniella from EastEnders' – I'd become simply Brian's girlfriend. We were both fiery personalities, constantly clashing. We got engaged, but I knew I couldn't marry him."
The once friendly relationship between Brian and Danniella turned sour in 2021, culminating in a heated social media dispute where she labelled him "paranoid". The altercation concluded with Danniella claiming she had fought to get a restraining order against her former partner.
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