Duncan James started speaking to a therapist after he got “a bit depressed” in lockdown last year.
The Blue singer opened up about the impact of being isolated from his boyfriend Rodrigo Reis and his daughter Tianie-Finn during lockdown in an interview with OK! magazine.
“I was getting a bit depressed and a bit crazy,” Duncan James said in a joint interview with his boyfriend.
“Rodrigo said, ‘Speak to someone.’ In Britain, we always think, ‘Oh, you only need a therapist if you’re crazy’. But when you look at people in America, they have therapists for everything. I think it’s been important for us as well.”
James continued: “I started speaking to a therapist online and it really helped. It’s helped with my own anxieties and worries, and it was nice to have someone to talk to.
“It was just a build-up of things. We’ve all struggled with our mental health, especially this last lockdown.
“It’s been tough. It got to a point where I said to Rodrigo, ‘I feel I have no one to talk to. I can’t escape, I can’t do anything. It’s awful.’”
Vile trolls have told Duncan James he is going to ‘hell’ because of his sexuality
Elsewhere in the interview, James opened up about the shocking homophobic abuse fans have hurled at him online.
The singer has been told he is “disgusting” and that he will “go to hell” because of his relationship with Reis.
“A lot of any fans in the UK have been really supportive, but I’ve got a lot of international fans who still find it hard to accept I’m gay.
“Rodrigo and I posted a picture and there were a few bad comments, like, ‘It’s disgusting – look at you two. You’re going to hell.’”
Duncan James’ latest comment came just weeks after he admitted that his teenage daughter has been targeted by homophobic trolls because of his sexuality.
“People can be quite nasty about me being gay and say quite horrible things about the fact that I’m a gay dad,” James told Fabulous magazine in March.
“People have written to her, saying, ‘Isn’t it disgusting your dad’s gay? How do you feel? You must be ashamed of him,’ and stuff like that, and you’re just like, ‘Why are you writing to a kid saying stuff like that? Are you really crazy?’ People are just awful.”
In the same interview, James said he has been told he will be “punished by God” for being gay by vicious trolls.
“I think it’s probably because they’re frightened about it or they don’t have the awareness or their religion has dictated that it’s wrong and it’s disgusting,” he said.
James first came out as bisexual in a 2009 interview with the News of the World, but he later claimed he had been pressured into saying he was attracted to both men and women by tabloid reporters.
Speaking to Gay Times in 2013, he said: “I didn’t decide to come out, I got outed by them. They had a team of investigators and had an inkling I was up to some stuff and they had a file on me.”
James first met his boyfriend in Belgium, where he was performing with Blue. The couple instantly connected when they met at an after party.
The happy couple told OK! magazine that they are hoping to buy a house together in east London when visa restrictions allow Rodrigo to move to the UK.
