Lewis Capaldi’s parents have said their son isn’t the ‘happy’ guy we all think he is, as he opens up about his experience with anxiety and panic attacks in a new Netflix documentary.
The Scottish singer-songwriter has allowed cameras into his life for an ‘all-access’ film documenting his struggles to balance his fame with a desire for ‘normalcy’.
In How I’m Feeling Now, which was released on Netflix today (3 April), 26-year-old Capaldi speaks candidly about his growing anxiety amid the pressure of following up his successful first album.
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We see as he starts developing nervous tics in his shoulder, which he later discovers is due to Tourette’s syndrome.
“This twitch became out of control and it was awful, it was absolutely horrific,” he says.
“It started to get in my head about these pressures about being like, 'Oh f**k, there's like skin in the game now, rather than just me singing my silly little songs. Other people are depending on me.'”
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Capaldi says he twitches ‘every single f**king day’ of his life, and that ‘f**k all’ helps him.
“If you Google ‘anxious twitches’, you will find shoulder shrugging as the top one,” he tells parents Mark and Carole in one scene.
“I get it when I’m traffic, it flares up.”
He says it happens when he gets ‘proper exhausted’, but brushes off his dad’s concerns, adding: “It comes and goes. It’s part of life, brother. Get used to it.”
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At another point, he also says he experiences panic attacks that make him feel like he's 'going insane' and 'completely disconnected from reality.
“I can’t breathe, like I can’t feel my breath going in," he explains.
"It's f**king wild. And I get dizzy and I... I'm sweating, my whole body starts to do what my shoulder does."
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Later in the documentary, Mark and Carole explain how their superstar son isn’t the ‘happy chappy guy’ many of us see on stage, in interviews or on social media.
Carole says: “You think, ‘Where is all this coming from? All these deep, meaningful words that he manages to get into a song?’
“I mean, I think everybody’s complicated, they’ve got things that they keep to themselves, and that’s just Lewis. He’s not just the comedian we all think he is.”
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Dad Mark adds: “He sees humanity, that darkness, and he understands it, and he can vocalise it.
“And that’s where the conflict possibly is as well, because the darkness comes over the happy chappy guy and manifests itself in all the tics, the anxiety and all the other things that he’s kind of surrounded in.”
Watch How I’m Feeling Now on Netflix now.
Topics: Celebrity, Documentaries, Music, Netflix, TV And Film, Lewis Capaldi
Jess Hardiman