Singer Conor Maynard has spoken about his “traumatic” paternity drama with The Traitors star Charlotte Chilton.
Chilton publicly claimed last year that the R U Crazy singer is the father to her daughter Penelope, who was born in October 2024.
In March this year, the musician, 32, said in a social media post that he had taken a paternity test and that the results “confirm that I am not Penelope’s father”.
Maynard appeared on ITV’s This Morning on Friday to discuss one of the “worst years of his life” and his battle to return to normality after struggling with his mental health.
When host Paddy McGuinness asked how he felt after receiving the paternity results, he confessed: "I actually felt like I was going to have a massive panic attack the second I found out.
"That's the difficult truth about mental health: something traumatic happens to you, and then when that traumatic event stops, you don't go 'oh I'm fine now, everything is fine. Great I can now move on'."
He elaborated: "It doesn't really work like that. Initially, my friends were like 'Do you want to grab a drink? We'll go do something, go hang out near your house, we can just talk'.
"But I stayed at home with my girlfriend. We stayed in that night and realistically tried to stay calm and have a relaxed night."
Maynard went on: “One of the main reasons I felt like right now was the right time to speak about it was because the last year has been really difficult, and mental health is something that I’ve struggled with for a big portion of my life.
“Obviously, this most recent year has been definitely up there, in terms of my experience and my battle with it, and I’ve never really shied away from that in the sense, you know, my fans who follow me online and on social media, I’ve spoken about it openly before.
“Today I’ve released a brand new song, which goes quite deeply into my battle with anxiety and obviously there have been a lot of things that have happened, and there’s a lot of things that have contributed to why things have been so difficult.”
He continued: “What was probably one of the most difficult aspects of the entire situation was it was so kind of shocking to me how it seemed like there was such a failure from the public, and also sometimes even from the press, to require proof before condemning me for something that, obviously, ultimately ended up being false and being not true.”
He added: “It was just very difficult to kind of understand that this was all happening without anyone really knowing the true story, or anyone really knowing whether or not it was completely true.
“I think what was difficult for me was, instinctively, you want to defend yourself, you want to be able to speak your side, but I didn’t know what was true and what was not.”
Asked if he been told about about Chilton’s pregnancy before the media storm, he said: “I was aware of the situation before, however I had no idea that it was going to go to the press.
“I didn’t know any of that was going to happen. In my mind, it was like, well, obviously the natural proceeding would be to get a test to basically make sure that everything is 100% certain, and then obviously we deal with it accordingly.
“Obviously, that’s not the way it went. And I think it was difficult to remain silent.”
He added: “I instantly was painted as a deadbeat dad and … all of my comments across all of my social media was very much all about that.
“As I said, instinctively you want to defend yourself … but I also felt like it wasn’t right to speak on it until I knew the truth myself, and I didn’t want to force that, I obviously researched paternity tests and that kind of thing, and I know that it can be considered dangerous for a child that isn’t born yet, and also when they’re very early in life.
“I was kind of just waiting and allowing that decision to come from the other side.”
Maynard confirmed the two had initially met at a party with her other Traitors contestants.
Chilton told the It Can’t Just Be Me podcast in October 2024 that they met at Raffles hotel in London for a Traitors after-party organised by winner Harry Clark, whose girlfriend, Anna, is the sister of Maynard.
Chilton has been approached for comment.
