Camila Cabello claims that she told her Fifth Harmony bandmates she was leaving to pursue a solo career, but sources tell Us Weekly that’s not exactly what went down. According to one insider, “nobody knew” the singer was quitting the group.
As previously reported, the band shocked fans when they released a statement on Monday, December 19, claiming that Cabello’s reps had informed them she’d quit. Shortly after, in her own statement, Cabello stated she was “shocked” by the group’s statement and that the girls were always aware of her feelings. (In her statement posted to Instagram, Cabello wrote: “The girls were aware of my feelings through the long, much needed conversations about the future that we had during tour. Saying that they were just informed through my representatives that I was ‘leaving the group’ is simply not true.”)
“Nobody else in the band or their team knew until last night, when the lawyers told management,” the insider tells Us Weekly of Cabello’s exit. “They knew she wanted to go solo eventually down the line, but nobody knew it was happening last night. It was always going to be open-ended, where she did solo projects but would came back and work with the group at one point.”
A second source adds that her band members, Dinah Jane, Normani Kordei, Ally Brooke and Lauren Jauregui, “were genuinely shocked and blindsided” by her sudden exit and that Cabello had “not one conversation with anybody about her solo career.” The source tells Us that Fifth Harmony even sought the help of a group therapist to help communicate and work through their issues while on the road in an attempt to “have an objective person there and be mature about it,” but Cabello refused to show up to the sessions. “The girls have been trying to have meetings with Camila for a year to discuss her solo career and plan their future and she would never do it and refused,” the source adds.
However, another insider maintains that Cabello was always vocal about exiting the band and her decision shouldn’t surprise anyone.
“Camila leaving the group has been going down for a long time,” the source tells Us. “She has always wanted to be on her own and planned this for a while.”
According to the source, the band’s management company “placed her in solo projects so you could already see it coming. It’s not a surprise to anyone. Her lawyer made it clear that she would not be signing a new agreement when her agreement was up.”
As for what the remaining band members will do, the first and second sources both tell Us that they’ll move forward as a foursome.
“There will be no new name or member,” the insider tells Us. “They have already been working on new stuff and are just going to keep moving forward and are still going strong. The girls only care about their fans. They just want their fans to be OK and happy.”
