Liam Payne has been doing some soul-searching. The former One Direction member just marked six months of sobriety and is now opening up about the motivation behind those "cringe" remarks he made about his bandmates on Logan Paul's podcast in 2022.
In a new YouTube video titled "I'm Back," Liam Payne shared that he went to rehab after appearing on the Impaulsive podcast. "A lot of what I said came from the wrong place. I was so angry at what was going on around me and instead of taking a look inwards, I decided to look outwards at everybody else and I took it out on everybody else, which is just wrong," the musician explained. “[Because of] my own frustrations with my own career and where I kind of landed, I took shots at everybody else, which is wrong, so obviously I want to apologize for that in the first instance, because that's definitely not me.”
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But wait, what did Payne actually say? In June 2022, he appeared on Paul's podcast and dished on drama between the bandmates, including how he and Louis Tomlinson "hated" each other during their 1D days. (They're good friends now.) Payne also alluded to nearly coming to blows with a bandmate, and said a few disparaging things about Zayn Malik, which he then walked back later on Twitter.
Despite the comments, Payne's former bandmates stuck by his side. He shared that even Malik, who he'd famously butted heads with post-split, was supportive. "The rest of the boys really stuck by me, and when I needed them the most, they kind of came to the rescue," Payne shared. “Even Zayn as well, which is why I did send him a little thank you online, actually. It came across really big-headed didn’t it?”
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Payne admitted that talking about 1D so publicly (and negatively) would get attention and called it "a scramble to stay relevant." After the backlash, he decided to go to rehab and figure out what mattered most to him; he even called the podcast a "life-changing [moment] that saved my life in a way."
“I have had a lot of time to recollect over those moments. I kinda had to go away to kinda get better," he explained, sharing that he was in treatment for a little over three months. The musician has a new perspective and is ready for what's next. “I just kind of feel like I've got more of a grip on life and everything that was getting away from me." We love self-awareness.
