I almost committed suicide â€" Cindy

By Kalungi Kabuye

At the height of the scandals involving her being sacked and then nude pictures of her appearing in local tabloids, former Blu*3 star Cinderella ‘Cindy’ Sanyu considered the possibility of committing suicide.

In an interview which appears in the March issue of the City Beat magazine, which came out this week, Cindy speaks of the pressure of being in the limelight; what it meant to become part of and then leave the popular girl group Blu*3, and then “those pictures,” and the strength it took to overcome all that.

“There was a time I just wanted to die,” (when the nude pictures were published) she told City Beat. “My mother would call me every 15 minutes to make sure I was okay, she thought I was going to kill myself. To be honest I did think about it.”

The nude pictures of her published in a local tabloid was the climax of a catastrophic time which included her being fired from Blu*3, which had sent her into a deep depression.

“Man, that was the worst timing ever,” she said. “I had just started to get back to my feet, started doing concerts and people were accepting me as Cindy, and then bam! It was terrible, really bad.”

Cinderella Sanyu first appeared on the scene as a 15-year-old girl from Mbale trying to be 18, when she participated in the Capital Radio All Stars talent search.

When she did not win it (she was third) she was ready to take the bus back to Mbale except for producer Steve Jean, who took her on.

Steve Jean was to be instrumental in building her career, and was the one who made sure she participated in the Coca Cola Pop Stars contest, which would eventually culminate in the formation of Blu*3.

So when she was fired from the group, she felt not a little betrayed by Jean. “He was the one who started me on, who believed in me and what I could become. So when the group fired me I felt betrayed, like my heart had been broken,” she said.

Cindy also talks about the early days of Blu*3 when she, an ‘upcountry’ girl, tried to mix it in with the city girls Lillian and Jackie.

“I kind of looked up to them, especially Lillian who seemed to know everybody and everything,” she tells City Beat.

“I also wanted to be also a city chick. It took me a long time to realise that I could be a city girl my way, before I stopped being this person everybody wanted me to be this superstar hanging out with the crowds, going to posh places with posh boyfriends.”

To read the entire Cindy interview, pick up the March 2009 issue of City Beat.