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Harry Styles detailed his grief over losing fellow One Direction alum Liam Payne in 2024, and the biggest way he’s decided to honor his late friend.
Why Louis Tomlinson Can "Never Accept" Liam Payne's Death One Year After Passing
Harry Styles is holding on to all his memories with Liam Payne.
A little over a year after the death of his One Direction bandmate in October 2024, Harry spoke candidly about his grief.
“It's so difficult to lose a friend,” the 32-year-old told Zayn Lowe an Apple Music interview released March 4. “It's difficult to lose any friend, but it's so difficult to lose a friend who is so like you in so many ways. It's like, I saw someone with the kindest heart who just wanted to be great.”
And since losing Liam—who died after a fall from a balcony at a hotel in Argentina at the age of 31—Harry has continuously sought ways to honor his late friend.
“It was a really important moment for me in terms of taking a look at my life and being able to say to myself, ‘OK, what do I want to do with my life? How do I want to live my life?’” he said. “And I think the greatest way you can honor your friends who pass away is by living your life to the fullest.”
Overall, Harry will always remember Liam as a “super special person.”
The “Aperture” singer—who was in the band alongside Liam, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson for five years—also detailed the challenges he faced while navigating his grief in the public eye.
“Full transparency, it’s something that even the idea of talking about it—I struggle with that a little bit even,” he shared. "I 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 own part of your grief in a way.”
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“I have such strong feelings around my friend passing away,” he added. “And then suddenly being, you know, like aware of there's maybe like a desire from other people of you to convey that in some way, or it means you're not feeling what you're feeling or something, you know?”
Harry’s comments come shortly after Louis—whose mother and sister died in 2016 and 2019, respectively—detailed the ways in which he still struggled after losing Liam, despite having navigated loss before in his life.
“I naively thought that, at this point,” Louis told The Independent in an interview published Oct. 18, “I'd unfortunately be a little bit more well-versed with grief than other people my age. I thought that might mean something, but it didn't at all.”
He added, "It's something I'll never really accept, I don't think."
For more on the many ways Liam was honored following his death, keep reading...
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