Editor's Note: The following story contains discussions of suicide.
Jimmy Allen describes putting bullets in his gun in a hotel room as he considered killing himself in the wake of a May 2023 lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault. If not for a timely message from a friend, the “Down Home” singer told Kathie Lee Gifford in an interview, he might not be here to talk about it.
“I don't feel that way now, but in that moment, when you feel like you have nothing… In a society where it's no longer innocent until proven guilty… He said it, so it must be true,” Allen. 38, the former morning talk show host said in the hour-long chat. Allen's former manager dropped her lawsuit against him last month, but the singer told Gifford that the upheaval over the initial rape accusation caused him to consider suicide at a time when he felt that “all of his world had just collapsed.”
“The first thing my brain goes to is not career. It's, how am I going to take care of my kids? I had three [kids] then,” Allen told Gifford, a longtime friend who has supported him since the early days of his career. Following the lawsuit, Allen – who denied allegations of wrongdoing with the unnamed woman with whom he admitted having a sexual relationship – stepped down from his record label, BBR Music Group, as well as his booking agency, management and label public relations and removed from a 2023 CMA Fest performance reception and commencement keynote at Delaware State University. “I think to myself, how am I going to take care of my family? And then it hit me. My life insurance covered suicide.”
Last month, the former manager agreed to drop her lawsuit, with Allen agreeing to drop his counterclaim accusing the woman of defamation.
Allen told Gifford he felt “pissed, confused and heartbroken” after the initial testimony from the woman he considered a friend, who he said became emotionally attached to him during what he described as a years-long relationship he considered the most. of a natural nature that unfolded as she prepared to marry. “No matter how I felt about anything, I committed to her [estranged wife Alexis Gale]Allen said. “For the longest time in the back of my mind I remember thinking, 'well, as long as I take care of my wife and kids, I have the freedom to do whatever I want,'” said Allen, a father of six. “This is wrong, I made a commitment and I should have either stuck with it or finished it.
He also admitted that “I knew I wasn't ready to be a husband” when he got married. “I was at that point in my life where I felt like I had to do this,” he added of his marriage to Gayle. Allen recently confirmed that he fathered twins with an unnamed woman in the midst of his divorce from Gayle. “I wasn't in a position for belief either,” he said.
He also described being in that hotel room on May 11 – the day before his scheduled commencement speech – feeling like “the whole world had come crashing down” and putting the last bullet in his gun when a text came from his friend Chuck Adams , even though it had a message. notifications turned off. “He said, 'Quitting is not the answer.' And when I read those words he texted me, I read them again. I just stopped,” Allen said, sobbing and folding in a handkerchief. “I remember calling one of my friends who lived in the Lower Delaware. It went up. I gave him my gun. I said, “Take it. I don't need it.”
“Every day I remember fighting 'Do I want to live? Don't I want to live?' I'm like, “Man, my family would have X amount of dollars if I had it [taken] care about something,” Allen recalled thinking at the time. “But I realized that's not the way to do it.”
Then his mother, friends, fellow musicians and Oscar-winning actors he'd never met got in touch — though some “top executives” at his record label who he thought cared about him never came knocking — and managed to get through that difficult time with the help of therapy. He also told Gifford that while on tour with one of his favorite artists, Carrie Underwood, he briefly “turned to drugs,” such as Percocet, sleeping pills and marijuana, to help him cope with the intense stress of the situation, noting that he is now sober.
“I'm healing and growing for me and my kids,” she said of son Aadyn, 9 (from a previous relationship), daughters Naomi, 4, Zara, 2, and son Cohen, 6 months, with her estranged wife Alexis, and one-year-old twins Amari and Aria 2023 with a friend.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Allen described his struggles in the music industry, detailing a time when an unnamed awards show producer asked his company to send a photo of what the singer planned to wear to the program because of what he described as his desire. to win the “suit” usually worn by mainstream country singers.
Watch Allen's interview with Gifford below.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/country/jimmie-allen-contemplated-suicide-2023-sexual-assault-lawsuit-1235664867/
