Louis Tomlinson has spoken out about Liam Payne‘s death saying it was “impossibly difficult for him to deal with”.
- READ MORE: Liam Payne 1993-2024: One Direction star who helped spark a pop phenomenon
Payne passed away in October 2024 after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Speaking in a new interview with Rolling Stone UK, the former One Direction singer said: “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.”
Tomlinson and his former bandmates Harry Styles, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik all paid tribute to Payne in a statement following his death while each band member also took to their social media accounts to pay their respects. But they have rarely spoken about Payne’s death since.
At the time Tomlinson shared a lengthy tribute on his Instagram account saying: “I am beyond devastated to be writing this but yesterday I lost a brother. Liam was somebody I looked up to everyday, such a positive, funny, and kind soul.”
He has now explained how the 15th anniversary of the band’s formation earlier this year had proved tough because it was the first one to be celebrated without Payne. “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,” he said.
Tomlinson went on to admit that past anniversaries made him feel a bit “sick of nostalgia”, though the latest one was different. He 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.”
According to Tomlinson, Payne was the “safest pair of hands” in the band because he had the most entertainment experience when they were formed.
“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 recalled. “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.”
Tomlinson also took the opportunity to defend Payne against judgments made against him in the past, particularly after he made negative comments about his time in One Direction while appearing on a 2022 episode of Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast.
“He was just a very misunderstood person, I think, from a public perspective,” Tomlinson said of Payne. “If there is ever any judgement on his character, I think nine times out of 10, you can reflect on that, and the reflection is that he was someone who just wanted to be liked.”
The singer added that anyone who knew Payne “personally would know how deeply unfair” the backlash he received after the podcast interview was. “Anything that he got wrong in life, Liam – which, by the way, we all do daily – it was never through malice,” Tomlinson added. “It was only through miscommunication – him just not being able to express himself in the way he needed to.”
Elsewhere, Tomlinson and Malik recently announced that they are set to reunite for a new Netflix documentary series.
The former also recently announced his third studio album ‘How Did I Get Here?’, which will be released on January 23 and you can pre-order here along with a 2026 arena tour which will see him play around the UK and Europe next year. You can see all the dates here, while tickets go on general sale on Friday (October 10) here.