{"id":313656,"date":"2026-03-05T04:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T04:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/313656\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T04:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T04:06:08","slug":"harry-styles-says-he-still-mourns-liam-payne-and-really-struggled-with-his-friends-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/313656\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Styles says he still mourns Liam Payne and ‘really struggled’ with his friend’s death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pop star Harry Styles<\/a> says he is still grappling with the death of his former One Direction bandmate and friend Liam Payne<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there was a period when he passed away where I really struggled,\u201d Styles said in an interview with <\/a>Apple Music\u2019s Zane Lowe posted Wednesday. <\/a>\u201cI have such strong feelings around my friend passing away.”<\/p>\n

Payne was 31 when he fell from a third-floor balcony on Oct. 16, 2024<\/a>. His sudden death sent shock waves through the music world and plunged his fans around the world into mourning.<\/p>\n

Styles said what happened to Payne prompted him to reassess his own life.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s so difficult to lose a friend. It\u2019s difficult to lose any friend, but it\u2019s so difficult to lose a friend who is so like you in so many ways,” he said. “It\u2019s like, I saw someone with the kindest heart who just wanted to be great.”<\/p>\n

“It was a really important moment for me in terms of taking a look at my life and being able to say to myself, \u2018OK, what do I want to do with my life? How do I want to live my life?\u2019” Styles said. “And I think the greatest way you can honor your friends who pass away is by living your life to the fullest.”<\/p>\n

He also addressed the difficulty of trying to mourn as an artist in the public eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI struggle with that a little bit even,\u201d Styles said. \u201cI think there was a period when he passed away where I really struggled with kind of like acknowledging how strange it is to have people kind of like own part of your grief in a way.” <\/p>\n

“I have such strong feelings around my friend passing away,” he continued. “And then suddenly being, you know, like aware of there\u2019s maybe like a desire from other people of you to convey that in some way, or it means you\u2019re not feeling what you\u2019re feeling or something, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Styles found himself talking about Payne while he was doing an interview to promote his new album \u201cKiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally<\/a>,\u201d which goes on sale Friday.<\/p>\n

After Payne died, Argentinian prosecutors said he had been incapacitated by \u201cconsumption of various substances\u201d before he fell to his death.<\/p>\n

In February 2025, an Argentine court cleared<\/a> three of the five people accused<\/a> of having had a hand in his death.<\/p>\n

But the court also upheld the pretrial detention of a hotel worker and a waiter at a local restaurant who were accused of plying him with cocaine. <\/p>\n

As of December, both men were still awaiting trial, according to British newspapers<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pop star Harry Styles says he is still grappling with the death of his former One Direction bandmate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-313656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}