Perrie Edwards Recalls Little Mix Risking Arrest in Dubai for Flying an LGBTQ+ Pride Flag on Stage

Perrie Edwards reflected on a time when Little Mix risked arrest for showing their allyship.

During an interview with Attitude, the English singer recalled a time when the U.K. girl group risked getting into legal trouble for flying an LGBTQ+ flag on stage.

Edwards, 32, remembered that the show, which took place in Dubai at the Dubai Media City Amphitheatre in 2019, had their team panicking.

“I remember our team stressing and everything like that,” she told the publication of The Assembly: A Global Teacher Prize Concert. “At the end of the day we did it because we wanted to do it, and it means so much to our fans. When we got to the airport, I think it was our team at the time, were scared we were going to get pulled at the airport. And we were like, ‘Oh well, let them try.'”

According to Edwards, the LGBTQ+ community “means everything” to Little Mix.

“Our LGBTQ+ fans have been such a core fanbase for so many years, and they’ve been so supportive and so incredible,” she said. “It’s a two-way street — they go above and beyond for us and we feel the same.”

Added Edwards, “It was a moment that meant so much to so many people at the time. And if that was going to get us in trouble, then so be it. We didn’t really care about that. We do everything for our fans and for the people that support us.”

In 2021, Jade Thirlwall opened up about the experience of performing that same show in Dubai with the girl group in a Metro U.K. op-ed.

“We were told numerous times to ‘abide by the rules’, which meant not promoting anything LGBT+ or too female-empowering (cut to us serving a four-part harmony to “Salute”). In my mind, we either didn’t go or we’d go and make a point,” she wrote at the time.

Thirlwall, now 33, continued: “When ‘Secret Love Song’ came on, we performed it with the LGBT+ flag taking up the whole screen behind us. The crowd went wild, I could see fans crying and singing along in the audience and when we returned it was everywhere in the press.”

After seeing so many positive messages from fans, she wrote that “it made laying in our hotel rooms s—-ing ourselves that we’d get arrested that night more than worth it.”

Little Mix, which formed as a quartet in 2011 on The X Factor, is comprised of Edwards, Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jesy Nelson.

However, in November 2020, Nelson, now 34, announced she was leaving the band to focus on her mental health.

Elsewhere in the latest Attitude interview, Edwards spoke about how a Little Mix reunion was “100 percent” in the cards but said that it will “definitely” only feature three members.