Louis Tomlinson and his fellow former One Direction bandmates haven’t even considered a potential reunion since Liam Payne’s tragic death.
“Never say never, right, but I’m just not sure it would be right to him,” Tomlinson, 33, said on the Wednesday, October 8, episode of the “Diary of a CEO” podcast. “Say for the sake of argument, 25 year’s time, it’s like a f***ing Oasis thing, [and] they offer us an arm and a leg, and they’re like, ‘Come back and do this many shows.’ I don’t know.”
According to Tomlinson, Payne’s death “just completely put a pin in all of that.”
“The irony is there was no one campaigning for One Direction to get back more than Liam,” Tomlinson said. “I would say I came in a close second.” (Tomlinson and Payne rose to fame in 2010 as members of 1D alongside Harry Styles, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan. The group went on an indefinite hiatus in 2016, one year after Malik, today 32, left the band.)
Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson were connected for life through their stint in One Direction, which became one of the most successful boy bands of all time. But their friendship wasn’t always smooth-sailing, with the late “Teardrops” singer admitting he and Tomlinson, 32, “hated” each other at the beginning of their boy band journey. Later, […]
Payne died in October 2024 at the age of 31 following a fatal fall from a balcony in Argentina. In addition to sustaining several fatal injuries, Payne’s autopsy revealed the presence of a mixture of drugs in his system. (Payne struggled with substance abuse and had been to rehab multiple times through the years.)
As for Tomlinson, he was driving in Los Angeles when he learned the news of Payne’s death.
“I found out through Niall,” Tomlinson said of their former One Direction bandmate. “I had the same feeling that I had with [my sister] Félicité, and I think anyone has this when they’re around someone who’s struggling [of], ‘My 150 percent wasn’t nearly enough.’ That’s when it’s my own arrogance thinking that I could have helped really because it was so much deeper than what I could have done for him. He was definitely struggling at that time in his life.”
Tomlinson’s sister Félicité died following an accidental overdose at the age of 18, two years after their mother, Johannah Deakin, lost her battle with leukemia at the age of 42.
Louis Tomlinson. Skip Bolen/Getty Images
“I couldn’t believe how deeply unlucky we’d been as a family. Maybe it’s not overly uncommon, but at the time, I felt angry at life and I felt angry on behalf of my family,” Tomlinson said on Wednesday. “I wouldn’t be thinking, ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ It was more [because my younger sisters] Daisy and Phoebe are so young, and Lottie, as well. They’ve already had so much to discount with. Why this and why today? It did feel incredibly, incredibly unfair.”
Tomlinson further explained that he was “worried” about Félicité in the months preceding her death and initially “refused to compute” that she was gone.
“To lose my sister in the manner that we did, even though I knew it wasn’t fair on myself, I felt utterly guilty,” he recalled. “I felt powerless, and I felt like I’d let my sister and my mum down. My mum said to me [in] the last couple of weeks of her life, ‘You better promise me you’ll look after your sisters.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, you know, of course I will,’ and she was like ‘Especially Félicité, you know she’s fragile.’”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
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