“I was told in no uncertain terms that if anything ever happened like that again, I would be gone,” the singer recalled.

Mel C says she was almost kicked out of Spice Girls after telling Victoria Beckham to ‘f‑‑‑ off’

“I was told in no uncertain terms that if anything ever happened like that again, I would be gone,” the singer recalled.

By Shania Russell

Shania Russell

Shania Russell is a news writer at *, *with five years of experience. Her work has previously appeared in SlashFilm and Paste Magazine.

EW's editorial guidelines

July 8, 2026 2:18 p.m. ET

Leave a Comment

Mel C, Emma Bunton, Mel B, Victoria Beckham, and Geri Halliwell of the Spice Girls. Credit:

Tim Roney/Getty

- Melanie Chisholm is reliving the “trivial” argument that almost cost her a spot in the Spice Girls.

- The singer told Louis Theroux that months before “Wannabe” hit the airwaves, she told Victoria Beckham to ‘f‑‑‑ off.’

- “I thought I was gonna lose everything,” Chisholm admitted, saying she faced consequences the very next day.

Melanie “Mel C” Chisholm is looking back on the drunken night out that almost brought her music dreams to a grinding halt.

The Spice Girls member also know as Sporty Spice recently recounted how she was nearly ejected from the quintet after getting into an argument with Posh Spice herself, Victoria Beckham. While she didn’t specify the cause of the clash, Chisholm said one thing was for sure: It very nearly cost her a spot in the group.

“I went into terror because I thought I was gonna lose everything,” she said on Monday’s episode of* **The Louis Theroux podcast*. “Those dreams as a child which now were a possibility, I might have f‑‑‑ed it all up. And I thought it was very trivial as well.”

Chisholm explained that the conflict occurred during the 1996 BRIT Awards, five months before the girl group released their debut single, “Wannabe.”

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

“Nobody in the public knew us, but in the industry people had started talking,” she said. “And we were there and we were sitting on a table with Lenny Kravitz, which  obviously for these young girls, it was this amazing night.”

Chisholm said that by the end of the night, she and the other Spice Girls — all in their early 20s at the time — had sipped some champagne, noting, “It was the BRITs in the ’90s, right? Everyone was having fun.” And that’s when she made her faux pas.

“We were just leaving, we were going to find our car, and whatever the situation was, I just turned around and go, ‘Victoria, f‑‑‑ off,’” she recalled. “I go home, go to bed, I wake up the next morning and I was in a lot of trouble.”

When she woke, bandmates Melanie Brown and Geri Halliwell were present, and it was clear that something was wrong. “They were just disgusted with my behavior,” Chisholm said.

Victoria Beckham and Melanie Chisholm in Miami in 1996.

Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty

She continued, “You know when you’ve had a night out and you wake up in the morning and you’ve got like, beer fear,’ like, ‘Oh, what did I do last night?’ I didn’t even have that. I just woke up going, ‘Oh last night was fun.’ I completely brushed off that situation, but obviously it had really affected people in a way I didn’t realize.”

** has reached out to a representative for Beckham for comment.

Chisholm recounted how in the morning, she immediately got word that the group’s manager wanted to speak to her. “I was told in no uncertain terms that if anything ever happened like that again, I would be gone,” she said. “That completely freaked me out.”

Mel C reveals which Spice Girl had the 'best success rate' with men

Ranking the 42 Greatest Things About 'Spice World'

Chisholm pointed out that she was completely caught off guard, having not realized that she’d “done anything that terribly bad,” and was suddenly met with the reality that “my actions may have led to me losing everything I’d ever wanted.”

Needless to say, the incident left a significant impact on her — especially during the early years of the group’s meteoric rise to fame. Chisholm previously discussed the altercation with PEOPLE in 2020, admitting that though it as swiftly resolved, it had a lasting effect on her mental health.

The Spice Girls at the BRIT Awards.

JMEnternational/Redferns

″A tiny little thing I didn’t think was that bad could have jeopardized my whole dream,″ she said. ″So it made me really self-police. That got to the point of me being very controlling in different areas of my life. Losing control freaked me out.”

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our ******EW Dispatch newsletter******.***

Chisholm said that to cope with tensions in the band and pressure from being in the public eye, she began to “obsessively″ control her habits around food and exercise.

“I felt like I had to make myself perfect to really deserve all of this wonderful success,” she explained. “We were so ambitious, it was nuts. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we knew we had something very special, and we didn’t want to mess it up.”

*If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, text ″STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor. For support for eating disorders, contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or **NationalEatingDisorders.org**.*

- Celebrities & Creators

- Celebrity Feuds & Controversies

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Celebrity”