Former host has revealed she was dropped from all her brand deals after , and that it felt like a financial ‘punch in the stomach’.
In November 2020, Andrea announced that she had decided to .
Announcing her decision to exit the panel’s hot seat, she explained at the time that she’d had a and that the global pandemic encouraged her to stop and think about her life.
The 52-year-old has now said the financial impact of leaving the weekday programme felt like a ‘punch in the stomach’ and forced her to live off of her savings for eight months.
Speaking on the , Andrea said: ‘When I made the announcement I was leaving TV to follow my heart and dreams, go all-in on This Girl Is On Fire, obviously we put a lot of planning into this moment because obviously, it’s a huge jump.
‘I was the breadwinner and this was the job that was paying the bills but everyone in TV does jobs as well.’
She added that, while working on her memoir and mindset membership app, both titled This Girl Is On Fire, she relied financially on her TV job.
However, as soon as announcing her exit from the show, Andrea faced financial difficulties as her ‘safety net’ was dropped.
‘On the day that I announced I was leaving, every brand dropped me… so I went from, “OK I knew I had this amount of money coming in and this much work that will see me through to the next six to eight months,” it disappeared overnight.
‘That’s how big a deal moving away from TV is. It was financially like a punch in the stomach, my safety net was gone.
‘I was like, “Oh my god I only have my savings. I can’t turn back and change my mind. I have no other income.”
‘Nobody cares about you, they care about what you represent and I had just stepped away from a high profile job.’
She revealed thinking that those brands must not ‘value me or my worth’, despite stating that the brands ‘were all about raising women up, making us feel good, but actually they didn’t care about that, only my profile.’
Andrea did not name the brands in question but confirmed that.
‘I’ll go on it and chat about stuff, yes totally, but not to work on it now because I really love so much what I’m doing now,’ she said.
When Andrea announced she would be quitting the ITV daytime talkshow, she broke down in tears and told her co-panelists: ‘I want to be brave. It was a really big decision to jump and see if I fall or fly.’
She said: ‘You get one life. Are you living it the way that you want and are you doing everything that you want to do? Are you taking chances? And I realised, no.’
‘I just thought, I will never know unless I try so I am saying goodbye to Loose Women,’ she added.
Loose Women airs weekdays from 12.30pm on ITV.
