Simon Cowell says he and Liam Payne left things on good terms. Cowell, the X Factor (U.K.) judge who coached One Direction to worldwide success, recalled the last time he saw Payne in a November 29 interview with the New York Times. “I remember seeing him walk into this room and saying: ‘God, you look amazing, Liam. What have you done?’” Cowell said from his London home. “‘Well, I’m going to the gym’ and blah, blah, blah. We talked about his son and how much it means to be a dad. And I was talking to him about there’s more to life than just music; you’ve got to a point in your life where you’ve got choice now, etc. We just hung out as friends.”
Payne died in October 2024 after falling off a third-floor balcony while on narcotics. He had struggled with substance abuse during his time in One Direction as well. Cowell found out about Payne’s death while filming his Netflix docuseries The Next Act, which follows Cowell’s latest attempt at a boy band. “Somebody who works with me very closely came into my room,” he shared. “I was up in the north of England, and I could tell by the look of her face that she was upset. She said, ‘Sit down,’ and she told me. And it was like — wow.” Cowell compared the feeling of losing Payne to finding out his own father had died and said that he asked to speak with Payne’s parents “as soon as possible.”
Cowell now says he knew “a little bit” about what Payne was going through while the band was popular, but it wasn’t his job to deal with it, since he’s “not a manager.” “You’re signing a lot of artists, and when you sign an artist, my role is, essentially, get them with the right production team, get the managers and try and make them successful,” he said. “But at the same time, I probably had about 20 artists on my books at the time. It is a little bit like they leave the nest.” He added, “There’s only so much you can do with any artist.” “My job is to run the label,” he concluded. “And you just hope that they are successful and happy.”
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Cowell judged both Payne’s initial unsuccessful X Factor audition in 2008 and his successful one in 2010, put One Direction together with Louis Walsh and Nicole Scherzinger, and coached the band before signing them himself post-show. Reflecting to the Times on whether it was appropriate to make young kids, like Payne and the rest of One Direction, so famous, he said, “It’s always complicated.” “I don’t know whether it’s more complicated when they’re young or when someone who has had success then hasn’t had success and comes back and wants a second chance,” he continued. “I mean, every time it’s different. Every artist is different. Everybody has the same ambition, which is they come on our shows or they want to work with me because their dream is to be successful.” Following the tragedy, Cowell’s goal remains the same: “Risking it all” for a hit boy band, this time on Netflix.
