Mel B on Which Spice Girl Initiated the Group's Split
"We fought like cats and dogs," she said of the group.
-- Melanie Brown, otherwise known as Mel B, stopped by " Larry King Now " and spoke to the TV legend about what started the Spice Girls' first breakup that became official in 2000.
The Spice Girls, who were the hottest female group of the 1990s, consisted of Mel B, aka Scary Spice, Melanie Chisholm, aka Sporty Spice, Emma Bunton, aka Baby Spice, Geri Halliwell, aka Ginger Spice, and Victoria Beckham, whom everyone knew as Posh Spice.
"I think I'll always be Scary Spice," she joked with King on a show that aired this week.
She explained her nickname, "I still am very loud sometimes and a bit opinionated."
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But when the group was at its pinnacle in 1998, Brown said there was intense fighting and that Halliwell was the first to leave the group, which ended up being the biggest selling all-female band in history.
At first, she said there was no downside and she was "with four of my best friends, traveling the world."
But "we fought like cats and dogs,” she added
Brown, 39, said she and Halliwell, 42, shared the leadership of the group from day to day, and that Halliwell "actually came up with the name" Spice Girls.
But "we had a five-year plan that got shortened after three years," she said. "We were all eventually going to go our own way, anyway ... We always knew Victoria was going into fashion, Mel C was always gonna do music, Emma wanted to do radio, and I kind of wanted to do a bit of everything ... but it did come early."
"When Geri left the group, it was bad," she said. "She left on my birthday, and didn't tell anybody. She just didn't show up. We had the rest of the tour, the American part of the tour to continued."
When King asked whether there was any bitterness, she said, "Yeah, for a long time between me and her."
Indeed, Mel B still reminds Halliwell of it.
"Like, I saw her a couple weeks ago and I said, 'Do you remember when you left on my birthday,'" she said. "She talks about it to this day, she had [an] eating disorder, pressure, she just felt the pressure too much, so she decided to take a break."