Ed Sheeran Breaks Down About Wife's Cancer Diagnosis

Ed Sheeran was overcome with emotion while speaking about his wife Cherry Seaborn's cancer diagnosis.

The singer-songwriter opened up about what it was like to learn that his pregnant wife was diagnosed with cancer in February 2022, in his new Disney+ docuseries, "Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All," which is set for release Wednesday.

In the first episode, the topic comes up as Sheeran and Seaborn speak about why she chose to be part of the documentary.

"I got diagnosed with cancer at the start of the year which was a massive," Seaborn said, according to People. "It made me massively reflect on our mortality. I would never agree to do anything like this, but it made me think, Oh if I died, what's people's perception of me? What do you leave behind?"

Seaborn then explained how the aim of the documentary was to capture another side of Sheeran — one that is human.

"For Ed, the whole point is he wants to say to people, I'm not just this music machine. I'm not just this robot that tries to get No. 1. I'm a father, I'm a son, I'm a friend," she continued. "It wasn't until this year when I was like, I might die."

Getting teary-eyed, Sheeran noted that Seaborn was playing the whole ordeal down.

"It was horrible," he said, later admitting he wrote several songs in four hours as a way of coping with the pain.

"When something really intense happens to him, he writes a song," Seaborn said.

Sheeran first mentioned his wife's cancer diagnosis earlier this year while speaking about the inspiration behind his upcoming album and the series of events that spurred him to musically reflect on his "deepest, darkest thoughts."

"I had been working on 'Subtract' for a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be," Sheeran said in a statement, according to People. "Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art."

Sheeran said writing music is therapeutic and helped him to process his emotions.

"I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out. And in just over a week, I replaced a decade's worth of work with my deepest, darkest thoughts," he said.

"Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumor, with no route to treatment until after the birth," Sheeran continued.

"My best friend Jamal, a brother to me, died suddenly, and I found myself standing in court defending my integrity and career as a songwriter. I was spiraling through fear, depression and anxiety," Sheeran added in reference to a plagiarism lawsuit involving his song "Shape of You." "I felt like I was drowning, head below the surface, looking up but not being able to break through for air."

Sheeran said those series of events inspired him to write an album that represented what he was experiencing.

"It's opening the trapdoor into my soul," he said. "For the first time I'm not trying to craft an album people will like, I'm merely putting something out that's honest and true to where I am in my adult life. This is last February's diary entry and my way of making sense of it. This is 'Subtract.' "

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