Ed Sheeran opens up about his wife’s cancer diagnosis in new docuseries
British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran opened up and got emotional while recounting his experience of learning about his wife Cherry Seaborn’s cancer diagnosis in his new Disney+ documentary series titled Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All. The docuseries is set to be released today, May 3.
His wife — who was pregnant for the second time — was diagnosed with cancer in February 2022. Seaborn, who’s usually reserved, shared why she decided to become a part of the documentary in a vulnerable sequence in the first episode titled Love, according to People magazine.
“I got diagnosed with cancer at the start of the year which was a massive s**tter,” she said. “It made me massively reflect on our mortality. I would never agree to do anything like this but it made me think, ‘Oh if I died, what’s people’s perception of me? What do you leave behind?’
“For Ed, the whole point is he wants to say to people, ‘I’m not just this music machine. I’m not just this robot that tries to get No. 1. I’m a father, I’m a son, I’m a friend.’ It wasn’t until this year when I was like, ‘I might die’,” she added.
“When something really intense happens to him, he writes a song,” revealed Seaborn.
The ‘Perfect’ singer disclosed that he wrote seven songs in four hours to deal with the pain he felt upon encountering the news. He got teary-eyed and explained that “it was horrible”.
Highlighting how much his wife means to him, the ‘Shape of You’ singer said, “It’s the most amazing thing in my life that nobody really knows about…everything in my life got so much better when she got into it.”
The four-time Grammy winner will be releasing his upcoming album - (pronounced subtract) on Friday. He announced on March 1 that he put his “deepest, darkest thoughts” into the album. “I had been working on Subtract for a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be.
“Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art,” he said.
“Writing songs is my therapy. It helps me make sense of my feelings. I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out. And in just over a week, I replaced a decade’s worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts.”
He expressed that the new album “opened the trapdoor” into his “soul”. “Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth.
“I was spiralling through fear, depression and anxiety. I felt like I was drowning, head below the surface, looking up but not being able to break through for air,” he wrote.
“For the first time I’m not trying to craft an album people will like, I’m merely putting something out that’s honest and true to where I am in my adult life,” said Sheeran.
Seaborn gave birth to their second daughter Jupiter last May. Their first daughter, Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran, was born in August 2020.
The two lovebirds first met at school at age 11 and stayed in a relationship before announcing their engagement on Instagram in 2018 and tying the knot shortly after.
