Every hour since the Melbourne Cup has pretty much been filled with another conspiracy theory as to why national treasure Jessica Mauboy bailed on the Race That Stops A Nation when she was booked to sing the national anthem: everything from ‘she refused for reasons pertaining to her being Indigenous’ (even though she regularly sings the anthem at events), to ‘she just didn’t make it in time’.
But, the most bizarre whisper was that Jess wanted to wear a pair of heels stocked in David Jones instead of Myer (a major Cup sponsor), then threw a tanty and refused to go on when boothang was told a firm ‘Hell. No’. Jess’ management seemed to confirm it in a statement that said she didn’t perform because of a “miscommunication with her styling team”.
Jess herself has stayed pretty tight-lipped on the whole drama, save for a cryptic tweet posted yesterday that explained sweet FA, except to say “I was really looking forward to it and of all the days for things to go wrong, unfortunately this was the one”.
Now Jess has revealed the genuine, legit, 100% factual reason she was a no-show: she suffered a full-blown panic attack.
And it *was* kinda brought on by a pair of shoes, because her styling team (her manager didn’t travel with her) got into a crazy argument with race organisers about what she could / couldn’t wear.
Struggling to get into the zone for her performance, it all became a wee bit too much right before showtime.
“Four minutes before I am about to be walked out from the green room, people on one side are bickering with people on another side and it started to suffocate me, it was crazy and I didn’t know what to do,” Jess told The Tele.
“All I could feel was all the bad energy coming from people, time stopped and I could see it all going on around me, I could see me stuck on the lounge and I’m thinking ‘Why aren’t you getting up and getting going?’ It was really horrible.”
She’s since met with a counsellor to work through the reasons she became so overwhelmed, but suspects it’s do with her cray schedule in recent weeks.
“I have been working extremely hard and it got to work overload but that’s the person I am,” she said. “I guess I discovered through all of this that I am only human and I can’t do everything.”
YOU’RE ONLY HUMAN, J-MAU, AND WE LOVE YA STILL.
Now bring it in.
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Image via Getty Images/Cameron Spencer.
