Ed Sheeran Juggles Grief While Playing Massive Shows in ‘Sum Of It All’: ‘I Don’t Want to Cry in Front of 78,000 People’

Ed Sheeran contends with the whiplash of playing a massive show in Poland the day after a memorial for his late friend, Jamal Edwards, in a new clip from the upcoming docuseries, Ed Sheeran: The Sum Of It All, premiering May 3 on Disney+.

Edwards died in Feb. 2022 at the age of 31 after suffering a cardiac arrhythmia brought on by cocaine use. As Sheeran recently told Rolling Stone in a cover story, he wasn’t just close with Edwards, but believed he owed the entrepreneur his career thanks to some early appearances on Edwards’ SPTV YouTube channel.

“I don’t want to get over it,” Sheeran said of Edwards’ death. “I would hate to talk about it, but not feel…”

The new Sum Of It All clip was filmed in late Aug. 2022, during shows in Warsaw, Poland and just one day after a memorial for Edwards. “It’s just kinda mad, what was yesterday and what is today,” Sheeran says as he walks backstage after finishing the concert, fans screaming in the background.

Sheeran goes on to say that he thought about Edwards and the memorial “the whole time” he was on stage. “Obviously it’s good to be distracted and have things, like playing to a crowd like that,” he continues. “But at one o’clock this morning, I was at the mural, and… it was just kind of weird. I was thinking, I don’t want to cry in front of 78,000 people, and I found myself really close at times. It’s just mad. It’s just like straight back to it. Fly home, go and do something really intense, and then straight back to, the show must go on.”

Edwards’ death, as Sheeran explained to Rolling Stone, was one of several heavy issues weighing on him in early 2022. Additionally, he was involved in a plagiarism suit over “Shape Of You” (which he won), and his wife, Cherry Seaborn, was diagnosed with a tumor that needed surgery while six months pregnant (Seaborn carried their child to term and had successful surgery in June 2022). After Edwards’, and another close friend died, too, Sheeran said he spiraled into a dark place. 

“I felt like I didn’t want to live anymore,” he said. “And I have had that throughout my life.… You’re under the waves drowning. You’re just sort of in this thing. And you can’t get out of it.” But, he added, those thoughts also felt “selfish… especially as a father. I feel really embarrassed about it.”

He credited Seaborn with helping him go to therapy for the first time, adding, “No one really talks about their feelings where I come from,” he said. “People think it’s weird getting a therapist in England.… I think it’s very helpful to be able to speak with someone and just vent and not feel guilty about venting.”