The world was rocked when news came of Liam Payne’s passing almost a year ago now, and as it approaches the anniversary, One Direction bandmate Louis Tomlinson is opening up about his death, calling it “unjust” and “frustrating.” He also revealed that celebrating One Direction’s 15th anniversary earlier this year felt “really uncomfortable.” 

It was confirmed that Payne tragically passed away after falling from his Buenos Aires hotel balcony, aged 31, on 16 October 2024. And now, Tomlinson has reflected on how “impossibly difficult” that time was—and still is—in an interview with Rolling Stone UK.

July this year marked the 15th anniversary of One Direction’s formation. Tomlinson explained how tough this was, as it was the first one celebrated without Payne. He said it was “really uncomfortable” because the collective “feeling to celebrate is as important, if not more important than ever, on behalf of Liam.” 

He added that, on previous One Direction anniversaries, he almost felt a bit “sick of nostalgia,” but this time, it was different. “You know, there’s still a level in my head [where it feels] unjust and frustrating that he’s not with us anymore,” Tomlinson said. “So, it just brought up those feelings, although I’m still living with them anyway.”

Despite going through his own grief of losing his mum, Johannah Deakin, in 2016 from leukaemia and his sister, Félicité Tomlinson, in 2019 from an accidental drug overdose, he called losing Payne “very different.” 

He explained how it “was really, really, impossibly difficult for me to deal with losing Liam,” and added: “Naively, I thought that because at this point, I’m relatively well-versed in grief for my age, that it might soften the blow. [That was] super-naive. It’s very different. I’ve never lost a friend before.”

And the friendship that the two, plus Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, and Niall Horan, built during their time in the band is incomparable. Tomlinson hailed Payne as the “safest pair of hands” because he had the most pre-One Direction experience. “We were all just so amateur, but he was already where he needed to be by the time he did his first [X Factor] audition,” he said. “None of us would have admitted it at the time, because you have a lot of pride as a young lad, but we all looked up to him like that.”

At the time of his death, Tomlinson paid tribute to Payne on Instagram. He explained to Rolling Stone UK that he felt a need to “set the record straight” in the post, to correct what he viewed as “deeply unfair” press that Payne had received. Highlighting the 2022 appearance on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, when he shared some negative memories about his time in One Direction.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Louis Tomlinson (@louist91)

In the Instagram post, Tomlinson wrote: “Liam was an incredible songwriter with a great sense of melody, we often spoke of getting back in the studio together to try and recreate the writing chemistry we had built up in the band. And for the record, Liam was in my opinion the most vital part of One Direction. His experience from a young age, his perfect pitch, his stage presence, his gift for writing. The list goes on. Thank you for shaping us Liam.”

Tomlinson was then asked if there was anything he would like fans to know now about Payne that they might not know already, to which he replied: “He was just a very misunderstood person, I think, from a public perspective. If there is ever any judgment on his character, I think nine times out of 10, you can reflect on that, and the reflection is that he was someone who just wanted to be liked.”