Caroline Flack’s Friend Feared She Was ‘Going to Die’ Before Her Court Hearing

A new docuseries about Caroline Flack’s final months reveals new details about the night before she appeared in court after being charged with assault.

Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth is a two-part docuseries about the events that preceeded the former Love Island host’s death by suicide at age 40 in 2020. It includes interviews with her mom Christine, her close friend Mollie Grosberg, her longtime agent Louisa Booth and others. 

In December 2019, Flack, who hosted the U.K. edition of Love Island from 2015 to 2019, was charged with assault after an altercation with her then-boyfriend, tennis player and model Lewis Burton.

The docuseries states that Flack saw a text from a woman on Burton’s phone. While she was waking him up to confront him about the message, she hit him with his phone. As a result, Burton suffered a minor head injury.

Burton called the police as the incident progressed, although Flack asked him not to, according to the docuseries.

Flack, who had a history of mental health struggles, allegedly told her friend Mollie Grosberg that after the police were notified, she found a piece of glass and cut her own wrists because she wanted everything “to be over.”

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), per the docuseries, initially didn’t want to charge Flack for the altercation and wrote in a report that “the injured party does not support the allegation.” However, a police detective with the Metropolitan Police appealed the agency’s decision. 

Later that month, Flack pleaded not guilty to the assault charge during an publicized appearance at London’s Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court. 

The night before Flack was due in court, Grosberg says, Flack “called a couple of people slurring, and I knew then, something was going on.”

“So a couple of us went over, and she was just completely out of it on the bed,” Grosberg recalls.

“[Flack] drank the minibar dry. She took whatever tablets were there in the hotel room that had been prescribed to her. We were just freaking out because the next day was the hearing, but also, I was thinking she’s going to die.”

Grosberg says she contacted a doctor who advised her to “put her fingers down [Flack’s] throat and see if she can vomit any medication.” She followed the instructions and, she recalls, “a few tablets came out.”

Flack’s agent, Louisa Booth, remembers receiving a phone call from Flack’s friends “that she has taken something, and they didn’t know what to do.”

After Flack received medical attention, Booth wasn’t sure how to proceed. “By this point, we’re 1 o’clock, 2 o’clock in the morning, and [Flack] had to be at her magistrates’ hearing the next day, quite early as well,” Booth says, adding that she was also concerned about what Flack would wear to court “because nothing was clean.”

“In the back of your mind, you’re thinking, ‘Should she be going to the magistrates’ hearing?’ because she’s obviously really unwell,” Booth continues. “I’m a mother. Am I doing the right thing here? Would I let someone do this to my daughter? I didn’t know what was best, but what I did think was, the short term payment of going was going to be better for her in the long term.”

“We got a mish-mash of clothes together. Some of them may be her friends’ clothes. And we had her ready the next morning,” Booth remembers. 

Grosberg, however, believes Flack “shouldn’t have gone” to court.

“That day, you can see her. She probably had an hour of sleep,” Grosberg says in the documentary. “We didn’t sleep. She was see-through.”

According to Hello Magazine, Flack wrote that she was having “the worst time of her life” on her Instagram Stories the day before her court appearance. “I don’t know where to go to. Where to look. Who to trust. Or who I even am,” she added.

Following the hearing, after which Flack was released on bail with conditions that prevented her from contacting Burton ahead of the trial, she wrote on social media, “Thankfully I know a lot of you will not believe all that you have heard and read following today’s court hearing…”

Thank you for your continued support and love…. It’s going to be a relief when I am able to give my side of the story, when I’m allowed to x,” Flack continued. 

She died by suicide on Feb. 15, about two months after the alleged assault.

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A coroner determined in August 2020 that Flack’s concern over publicity from the court case played a role in her death. 

“Although [Flack’s] general fluctuating [mental] state was a background and important in her death, I find the reason for her taking her life was she now knew she was being prosecuted for certainty, and she knew she would face the media, press, publicity — it would all come down upon her,” coroner Mary Hassell said at the close of a two-day inquest at Poplar Coroner’s Court.

Both CPS and the Metropolitan Police provided statements for the docuseries, with CPS writing, in part, “We are satisfied that the prosecution was correctly brought.”

The police, meanwhile, said, “While there was organizational learning for us on points of process, no misconduct has been identified.”

Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth will be released Nov. 10 on Hulu in the United States, and Disney+ internationally.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.