One Direction star Niall Horan has opened up about the devastating loss of his friend Liam Payne, who died in October 2024, revealing he still questions whether more could have been done
Liam Payne (L) and Niall Horan (Image: Getty Images for iHeartMedia)
Niall Horan has revealed he questions “could I have done more” for Liam Payne.
Niall had spent time with his former One Direction bandmate just days before he tragically died in October 2024, aged 31.
Payne, born in Wolverhampton, fell from the balcony of his third-floor hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Read more EastEnders star emotional as she says final goodbye after heartbreaking death
Payne had been in the Latin American country to attend an appointment for an American O visa renewal at the US embassy in Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile, Dinner Party singer Horan had been performing in Latin America on his sold-out tour at the time of seeing Payne.
The pair cheerfully posed for photographs together, which Liam shared across his social media platforms, warming the hearts of fans who had longed for a One Direction reunion. In the images, both Liam and Niall were grinning broadly while enjoying each other’s company once more.
In a recent interview, he recalled meeting Payne during the day before spending time together in Niall’s dressing room at the arena, but two years on from Liam’s devastating death, Niall has opened up about questioning whether more could have been done for the late singer.
“You go through ‘what could I have done if I’d known more?’,” he said, adding: “Should I have dug more into it? Could I talk to other people to get an angle on it? You can go through all sorts of stuff. ‘Cause I’d seen him a couple of weeks previous, I was bit like ‘Jesus’.”
Speaking on the Tommy Tiernan Show, Niall said of seeing Payne: “It was great to see Liam.”
Reflecting on the devastating moment he discovered Liam had passed away, Niall continued: ” Tour ends, then I finished in Colombia, then about a week later, went home. I was only home after a big, long stint on the road. End of the tour, and then I was just at home one night.”, reports the Mirror.
“I don’t know what day of the week it was. Can’t remember. And just looked down at my phone. I’d gotten a text. I was about to go to sleep, and the phone lights up, and you have a look, one last look. And I was… Pure shock.
“I knew he’d had a couple of issues, but because I wasn’t around him like I was in previous years, all the time, I didn’t realise to what extent.”
Niall explained he “knew stuff was going on” but wasn’t aware of the depth of Liam’s personal struggles. “You go through how, why, the stages of grief, that I probably really haven’t touched the sides on yet,” Niall said. In a gut-wrenching admission, he described how he had grown up alongside Payne from the age of 16, making the loss of such a close friend all the more unbearable.
The Irish chart-topper said glancing down at his phone on the night Liam died was the ultimate “shock” upon seeing the news. Yet the ordeal became even more distressing when Horan watched news channels, spotting his own face alongside pictures of Liam on screen.
“I found that very weird,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve gotten my head around it at all, really,” he commented, saying: “As I said, I’ve known that I shared a room with him with one of those stages at the X Factor. I’ve known him since I was 16 years old. And all of a sudden he’s 32 and… I also just kept thinking of his little son and things like that.”
Niall revealed he chose to disconnect from the media coverage after witnessing former One Direction bandmates giving interviews about Payne — a conscious decision to protect his own wellbeing and work through his personal grief.
“All that stuff is irrelevant to me. I have memories; I want to think about him in that way,” he said.
Two years on, Niall still hasn’t “wrapped his own head” around the devastating news.
As part of navigating his grief, Niall wrote the track End of an Era, lifted from his forthcoming album Dinner Party, which contains the poignant lyrics: “We had it, pure magic, remember what it was like, time passes, so fast, and I couldn’t tell you goodbye.”
