Former One Direction member Louis Tomlinson has opened up about his heartbreak surrounding the “unjust” death of bandmate Liam Payne, revealing that it was “really uncomfortable” celebrating the group’s 15th anniversary without him.
In October 2024, the world was rocked after it was confirmed that Payne had tragically passed away after falling from his Buenos Aires hotel balcony, aged 31.
Almost a year on from Payne’s death, fellow One Direction member Tomlinson reflected on his passing and how it heavily impacted the band’s 15th anniversary.
“It was really uncomfortable, actually, the 15th anniversary, because the [collective] feeling to celebrate is as important, if not more important than ever, on behalf of Liam,” Tomlinson told Rolling Stone UK.
The “Bigger Than Me” singer went on to reveal that One Direction anniversaries would leave him feeling “sick of nostalgia”. However, with this year’s celebration marking the first one without Payne, it was different.
“You know, there’s still a level in my head [where it feels] unjust and frustrating that he’s not with us anymore. So, it just brought up those feelings, although I’m still living with them anyway,” he shared.
“It was really, really, impossibly difficult for me to deal with losing Liam.”
Tomlinson admitted that he thought he was “well-versed in grief” as he tragically lost his mother, Johannah Deakin, in 2016 to leukemia, and his younger sister, Félicité Tomlinson, in 2019 to an accidental overdose. But Payne’s death was “very different”.
“Naively, I thought that because at this point, I’m relatively well-versed in grief for my age, that it might soften the blow. [That was] super-naive. It’s very different. I’ve never lost a friend before,” Tomlinson revealed.
Louis Tomlinson says Liam Payne had the “safest pair of hands”
Reflecting on their time together in One Direction, Tomlinson said Payne had the “safest pair of hands” due to his prior experience on the singing comp, X Factor.
“We were all just so amateur, but he was already where he needed to be by the time he did his first [X Factor] audition,” he shared.
“None of us would have admitted it at the time, because you have a lot of pride as a young lad, but we all looked up to him like that.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Tomlinson took the opportunity to defend Payne from the “unfair press” he copped in 2022 over an interview he did on Logan Paul‘s Impaulsive podcast, where the “Strip That Down” singer claimed he was the frontman of One Direction and revealed some negative experiences in the band.
“Anyone who knew him [Liam] personally would know how deeply unfair that was,” Tomlinson shared.
“Anything that he got wrong in life, Liam – which, by the way, we all do daily – it was never through malice. It was only through miscommunication – him just not being able to express himself in the way he needed to.”
Tomlinson added that Payne was “a very misunderstood person” and that he “was someone who just wanted to be liked”.
The singer’s incredibly candid interview comes shortly after Netflix announced that he and Malik would be embarking on an American road trip docu-series that dives deep into “reconnection, exploration and a lot of laughter”.
It’s not known if fellow One Direction members, Harry Styles or Niall Horan, will make an appearance in the series.
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