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Louis Tomlinson has shared his thoughts on Liam Payne's death in an interview with Rolling Stone, published on October 7. He expressed how hard it was and also shared how he and the other One Direction members used to look up to Payne.
Liam Payne died at 31 in October 2024 after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina. Tributes poured in from across the world, including his former One Direction bandmates. Moreover, 2025 marked the 15th anniversary of the band's formation.
In his interview with Rolling Stone, Louis Tomlinson spoke about how hard it was for them to process it, saying:
“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.”
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Expressing more about his grief and how he's dealing with it, Tomlinson added:
“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.”
“It was really, really, impossibly difficult for me to deal with losing Liam. 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.”
The Back To You singer also shared that Liam Payne helped him and the other band members a lot and that they looked up to him. He said:
“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. 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.”
One Direction was formed in 2010 after all the band members met on The X Factor. It comprised Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, and Harry Styles. They split in 2015 after Malik first left the band.
Louis Tomlinson on the "unfair" media attention Liam Payne received after his Impaulsive interview
Liam Payne gave an interview on Logan Paul's Impaulsive podcast, released on June 1, 2022. On it, he spoke about his time with One Direction and also mentioned some negative things. He said that one former bandmate “threw me up a wall”. He told that bandmate,
“If you don’t remove those hands there’s a high likelihood you’ll never use them again.”
He also shared his thoughts on Zayn Malik's decision to leave the band. This led to criticism from fans and the media towards Payne.
In the aforementioned Rolling Stone interview, Louis Tomlinson spoke about this and said:
“Anyone who knew him [Liam] personally would know how deeply unfair that was. 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 asserted that Payne was a "misunderstood person" in the public eye and just wanted to be liked.
