Tarja Turunen has opened up about her dramatic exit from Nightwish, revealing the full extent of what unfolded behind the scenes. The Finnish soprano sat down for an in-depth interview discussing her decision not to pursue legal action against the band following her dismissal in 2005, and spoke candidly about the personal toll the fallout took on her life.
“It’s very sad how everything ended up [with Nightwish], but the thing that I would have done differently is, I probably should have put them through hell,” Turunen said. “I had all my rights, there were contracts, and they would have been in deep shit for a long time if I had done that, according to my rights, but I didn’t. I just decided to move on and leave.”
She went on to describe what she says came next — a deliberate effort to damage her reputation publicly.
“What followed was their really great planning, how they wanted to destroy me publicly,” she continued. “That was something I never expected. It was nasty.”
Turunen also detailed the intense media scrutiny she faced in Finland in the aftermath of the split, which ultimately led her to leave the country.
“It was an insane period [after the split], and in a small country like Finland, my face was covering the tabloids for three weeks or so,” she said. “I left my home country. I had to. I went down to Buenos Aires.”
The singer described the wider impact the situation had on those closest to her, while also acknowledging the support that helped her through it.
“It was tough, because it affected so many more people than just me. It affected my family, my friends. Everybody was destroyed,” Turunen said. “It took me a long time to gain trust in people again. But luckily, I have amazing relationships and a long-lasting marriage with my husband. My family, my friends were there for me in that very hard period.”
The interview marks one of Turunen’s most candid reflections yet on a split that shook the symphonic metal world and left a lasting mark on both her life and the band’s legacy. To understand the full weight of her words, it helps to revisit the events that set everything in motion more than two decades ago.
Turunen was fired from Nightwish on October 21, 2005, immediately following the final concert of the Once Upon a Tour world tour at the Hartwall Arena in Helsinki. Backstage after the show, the band handed her a personal open letter. The letter was subsequently published on Nightwish’s official website. It accused her of prioritizing “business” and “money” over the band’s emotional commitment, and also raised criticisms about her attendance at rehearsals and soundchecks, as well as her overall attitude and behaviour.
What made the situation more complex was that Turunen had already made her own decision to leave. At a band meeting in December 2004, she informed the other members that she intended to depart after one more album and tour cycle, planning to focus on a solo career. The band’s decision to fire her publicly, rather than allow for a mutual and dignified parting, was what transformed a professional disagreement into a very public and deeply personal crisis.
Despite having the contractual leverage to pursue significant legal consequences against the band, Turunen chose restraint. The contracts in place at the time would have placed Nightwish in a difficult legal position for an extended period. It was a path she ultimately declined to take. Her decision to walk away rather than fight reflected a deliberate choice to protect her own peace, even at considerable personal cost.
Turunen strongly denied the open letter’s accusations. She held her own press conference in Helsinki in November 2005 to address the claims publicly. She pushed back against the characterisation of her motivations and made clear that her intention had never been to damage the band. The back-and-forth that followed played out in the Finnish press and on international music platforms, fuelling weeks of tabloid coverage that she has now described as one of the most destabilising periods of her life.
In the years since, Turunen has built a substantial and enduring solo career, establishing herself as a respected figure in the symphonic and classical crossover space entirely on her own terms. The wounds from 2005 clearly ran deep. Her most recent comments, however, suggest a woman who has long since found her footing — and who is now willing to speak plainly about what it truly cost her to take the high road.
