Niall Horan wonders if he could have 'done more' for Liam Payne before tragic death
Niall Horan has reflected on his heartbreak after the death of former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne.
Niall Horan has wondered if he could have done "more" for Liam Payne before his death.
The One Direction star was heartbroken when his former bandmate died aged 31 in October 2024 after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires just two weeks after attending one of Niall's gigs in the Argentinian capital city.
Appearing on the Tommy Tiernan Show, he admitted: "You start asking yourself: What could I have done? Should I have looked into things more? Should I have spoken to other people? You go through all of that."
Niall noted he is yet to "fully" process his friend's tragic death, which has been partially attributed to Payne's struggles with substance abuse.
Niall admitted "shock was definitely the first thing", but recalled how "great" it was to see Payne just two weeks before he died.
He said: "It was pure shock. I knew he’d had a couple of issues, but I hadn’t been around him as much in recent years, so I didn’t realise the extent of it.
"I knew something was going on, but not how deep it was."
Niall noted "it’s hard to take in", particularly given Payne's personal struggles.
He said: "Sometimes, when someone self-destructs, you can look back and recognise patterns.
"That’s maybe why the shock was so intense—even if, in some way, the surprise wasn’t quite as big...
"Still, nothing prepares you for looking down at your phone and finding out like that. Then, stupidly, I turned on the news — Sky News, CNN, BBC, RTE —and suddenly the whole world was talking about it. It was the biggest story everywhere...
"I even saw myself in pictures with him on the news. That felt very strange—seeing those images while trying to process everything..."
Niall explained how it was difficult seeing the story on the news, and he forced himself to detach from the outside noise in the lead-up to the funeral.
He added: "After I made the mistake of turning [the news] on that first time, I decided I couldn’t keep watching. At first it was fans, people we’d worked with, interviews—things like that...
"But I just thought, I can’t do this. I’ve got a funeral to go to. I have my own grief to deal with. I can’t be worrying about what people are going to say next...
"All of that noise became irrelevant to me. I want to hold on to my own memories of him, rather than focus on the negativity...
"I think it’s because I haven’t fully processed it yet. It’s a strange thing—to be in your thirties and realise that someone just a couple of weeks older than you can be here one day and gone the next."
