‘Every scene is affecting’ … Jesy Nelson: Life Changing. Photograph: Amazon View image in fullscreen ‘Every scene is affecting’ … Jesy Nelson: Life Changing. Photograph: Amazon TV review Television Review Jesy Nelson: Life Changing review – you just want to reach through the screen and hug the Little Mix star What begins as another celebrity lifestyle documentary shifts completely when the former Little Mix star faces a devastating diagnosis for her newborn twin daughters. Every scene is affecting
Frances Ryan Fri 17 Jul 2026 06.00 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google T he fact that cameras were there to witness the worst moment of Jesy Nelson’s life was seemingly a coincidence. Prime Video had been following the former Little Mix singer for a documentary on her life since leaving the band, as well as the birth of her premature twins. What no one could predict was that, seven months later, as producers continued to film the growing family, Nelson’s daughters, Ocean and Story, would be diagnosed with the life-threatening muscle wasting condition spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).
Jesy Nelson: Life Changing starts with a clip from the last time viewers saw Nelson as she relocated to Cornwall with the father of her twins, her fiance Zion Foster, last year. “When they start walking, they can walk on the sand,” a smiling Nelson tells Foster as they sit with their babies on the beach. Of course, anyone who has seen the headlines in recent months knows this is achingly foreboding; a lost future that must be grieved and reshaped.
Within seconds, we’re off the beach and in a hospital room as the twins are tested for SMA. Nelson’s mother, Janice White, was the one who sounded the alarm, when she noticed the girls weren’t kicking their legs.
Back at home, with the family having returned to Essex, Nelson and Foster are waiting for a consultant to call with the test results. “Can you hear me?” he says over a video call, as life-changing news is delivered via an iPad screen. “I feel like I’m going to be heartbroken for the rest of my life,” Nelson says to the camera afterwards.
View image in fullscreen Our mum, the campaigner … Jesy Nelson: Life Changing. Photograph: Amazon At times, it feels as if we are intruding on an experience few would choose to have in front of the world. But if you’re wondering why Nelson is putting herself through this, a line from the consultant sums it up: “We’ve already somehow wasted a lot of time [in treating the twins], as unfortunately SMA is still not part of the newborn screening in the UK.”
If Ocean and Story had been diagnosed at birth, gene therapy could have stopped their muscles from wasting. But without an early diagnosis, the twins are on catch-up: muscle that has not wasted already can be treated, but what has gone can’t be healed. This means the twins are likely to need equipment to move, eat, sit up and possibly breathe. If they had been left undiagnosed, they would probably have died by the age of two.
It is Nelson’s subsequent campaign to include SMA screening in standard newborn heel-prick blood tests that makes up the bulk of the documentary and gives it – and her – a driving purpose. We see Nelson become a patron of the charity SMA UK and give the then UK health secretary Wes Streeting a grilling on breakfast TV.
Every scene is affecting, but it’s the quiet moments at home with her mother – now providing full-time care alongside Nelson after Nelson and Foster break up – that feel the most auth…