Everything the Members of One Direction Have Said About Their Time in the Band

Zayn Malik

Zayn Malik was the first to leave the quintet when he exited in 2015. While the decision shocked fans, he told Call Me Daddy's Alex Cooper it had been a long time coming.

“I think I’d known for a minute, there was a lot of — look I don’t want to go into too much detail — but there was a lot of politics going on, certain people were doing certain things, certain people didn’t want to sign contracts, so I knew something was happening," he revealed. "I just got ahead of the curve if I’m being honest with you."

He also admitted the swift exit was due to a little bit of competition on his part, telling Cooper, "I completely selfishly wanted to be the first person to go and make my own record ... I’m a passive dude but when it comes to my music and my business, I’m serious about it and I’m competitive so I wanted to be the first to go and do my own thing.”

Outside of the business, the "Pillow Talk" singer revealed there was also some friction between the guys.

“There was obviously underlying issues within our friendships too, we’d been together every day for five years and we got sick of each other," he said, candidly. "We were close, we’d done crazy things with each other that nobody else in the world will ever understand or have the experiences that we’ve shared with each other and I look back on it now in a much fonder light than I would have as I’d just left. There were great experiences, I had great times with them but, yeah, we had just run our course.”

The interview was not the first time Malik discussed his time in the band. In January 2016, he shared the same sentiments with Beats 1 Radio and later told Complex, “No one can ever say I was ungrateful, even though it sort of comes across that way when I mention that I was frustrated with the band."

Harry Styles

Harry Styles has always seemed to look back on his time with One Direction fondly. The "Watermelon Sugar" crooner even gave the boys a shoutout when he won a Brit Award for artist of the year earlier this year.

In the past, the Grammy award-winner has been open about the pride he feels about his time in the group and the respect he has for his former bandmates.  

“When you look at the history of people coming out of bands and starting solo careers, they feel this need to apologize for being in the band," Styles told Variety in 2020.  "‘Don’t worry, everyone, that wasn’t me! Now I get to do what I really want to do.’ But we loved being in the band.”

In 2022, he told Zane Lowe that he feels “really lucky” to have had people who understood that early fame.

"I feel really lucky that we always had each other to be this unit that felt like you could keep each other in check and you could just have someone else who gets it," he shared. "Because it's impossible to not, at times I think everyone experiences this, feel like, 'Oh, everyone else is on the other side of the glass and I'm on this side of the glass, and no one really gets it.'"

He added, "I think having that is kind of priceless. There is very much respect between all of us, if we did something together. And that is something that you can't really undo. And you know, it's like a very deep love for each other, I think."

Liam Payne

Following a June 2022 interview with Logan Paul where he spoke critically about his former One Direction bandmates, Liam Payne retracted his statements in an eight-minute YouTube video in which he also revealed he'd spent 100 days in rehab.  

"A lot of what I said came from the wrong place," Payne said in the video shared earlier this month. "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, really."

"My own frustrations with my own career and where I kind of landed, I took shots at everybody else which is wrong," Payne admitted. "So obviously, I want to apologize for that because that’s definitely not me."

He went on to share that all of his former bandmates — including Malik, whom he'd said he "disliked" — hadn't abandoned him during the trying time. "When I needed them most they kind of came to my rescue," he confessed.

Prior to the podcast incident, Payne had been quite open about how difficult it was to manage the whirlwind fame. In a 2019 episode of Table Manners with Jessie Ware, he said that while the group ending was “really scary at first,” it had to be done. 

“I needed to stop, definitely,” Payne said. “It would have killed me. One hundred percent. You’ve got no control over your life. We were definitely overworked… I had no personal life. I learned nothing about myself.”

In a separate interview with Men's Health Australia that year, the singer also admitted he turned to alcohol during that time, as a way to cope. 

"It's almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage and underneath the Disney costume I was pissed quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on," he told the outlet. "I mean, it was fun. We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic."

Niall Horan

Niall Horan has also shared his take on all the reunion chatter and most recently told Zane Lowe that while it’s not off the table, there haven't been any substantial conversations.

“We speak regularly, but that conversation hasn’t happened,” he continued. “God knows what it ends up being — it could be like the Friends reunion, it could be a whole tour. God knows what it is, but it hasn’t been spoken about.”

In May, Horan, who just concluded his first season as a coach on The Voice, revealed the former boyband has a lively group chat. 

"We've had three or four group chats," he told  E! News. "Some of them have been more quiet than others. This new one is definitely louder than most, and it's been great.” 

In the past, though, Horan has opened up about feeling stifled by the fandom. In a 2021 episode of People, Just People he talked about how something as simple as getting out of a car became overwhelming as fans often swarmed the band.

"I struggled with the idea of, 'Why won't you just let us out?'" he told host Dermot O'Leary. "But, you can't get inside the brain of a fan and now I completely get it, but at the time, you're like, 'You're our age. Just let us out.'" he added. "[I wanted to say], 'We just want to walk down the street. You must understand.'"

Louis Tomlinson

In early 2023, Louis Tomlinson told The Times that he had a hard time dealing with the band's split.

"When One Direction split up, I was mortified, I was absolutely gutted," he said. "I was a bit bitter, I suppose because it just felt like another loss to me. But I've a better understanding of things now, and there's not as much anger. It is what it is."

While the split was difficult, Tomlinson told the outlet that he would be on board for a reunion. 

"Getting back together at some point is hard to imagine right now," he continued. "But I'd be surprised if we lived out our lives and didn't have a moment where we had a reunion, or whatever you want to call it. I'd be up for that."

He added, "I do miss the boys and I do definitely miss being one of the five, but I like doing my own thing too. It was time."

Following Payne’s viral appearance on Logan Paul’s podcast, Tomlinson did his part to contain the flames when asked about the "bit of 1D beef" during an interview on the Australian talk show The Project.

"No listen, I'm immensely proud — as I know Liam is — immensely proud of those days, obviously. I mean, it was an incredible thing to do and especially at such a young age. Amazing memories, man, amazing."