Jade Thirlwall embarrassed when Little Mix speculated on Prince Harry romance
Jade Thirlwall "tried to catch a vibe" from Prince Harry when they were both single after being encouraged by her Little Mix bandmates.
Jade Thirlwall "tried to catch a vibe" from Prince Harry.
The 31-year-old singer and her Little Mix bandmates Jesy Nelson, Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock met the prince - who married Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2018 - at the Royal Variety Performance in 2015, but she was left flustered when the rest of the group suggested they could find love together as they were both single at the time.
Speaking to Nick Grimshaw on his BBC Sounds podcast 'Sidetracked', she said: “I was single at the time and all the girls were like, ‘Oh, Harry. You could be in with a chance!’. I was like, ‘Oh, God, here we go’.
"They were being those sort of friends. And then, he is going down the line and I started getting nervous.
“I wasn’t even a***d but suddenly it was like 'Princess Diaries' in my brain.
“I shook his hand and I think it was Jesy who was like, ‘Ohhhh’. I was like, ‘Not in front of the Prince of England!’.
“I’m all for wing women, but not in that situation. He must have thought, ‘What a weirdo!’.”
While she wasn't initially interested in Harry, the 'Angel Of My Dreams' singer - who is in a relationship with Rizzle Kicks star Jordan Stephens - admitted her bandmates' teasing encouraged her to look for a spark with the prince.
However, there was no particular connection between them.
She said: “I can’t flirt anyways, so there was definitely nothing like that.
“Maybe I did a slight over-linger on the handshake, to catch a vibe. There wasn’t one. I wish him well.”
Little Mix went their separate ways two years ago and Jade, 31, recently admitted she struggled to feel "relevant" afterwards.
She said: “Little Mix was such a machine and there was so much pressure to be ‘huge’. I had been programmed to feel like I had to constantly be in the public eye for 11 years, and so I’ve struggled with feeling ‘relevant’ since taking a step back and having people around me be like, ‘It’s okay to not go to the opening of an envelope!’”
