Liam Payne has stripped down and opened up about his new role as an underwear model and his past in One Direction.
The 26-year-old, whose debut solo album LP1 comes out Dec. 6, admitted there are “definitely” grudges between the five former members.
“We had our differences throughout the whole experience with some things,” he told Britain’s GQ Hype. “I still think about some stuff that was said and done that now I would do differently, but then that's all part of growing up.”
Payne said there are still hard feelings about Zayn Malik, who quit in 2015, although he remembers him as “the best singer in One Direction.”
He said: “With Zayn’s particular exit and the way he chose to go, we haven’t really heard from him since he left. He didn’t even say goodbye, if I am being honest. It was a really sordid scenario, from our side certainly. A bit strange. It’s difficult.”
Asked if he felt like reaching out to Malik, Payne admitted: “I did, yeah … But it got to the point with me where I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Payne admitted the end of One Direction was hard to process. “I remember standing in my garden at my house and just looking around thinking, ‘It's been a lot of fun, but what do I do now that’s done? What actually happens at this point? Who do I call? Who is the ‘point of’ person?’
“I just didn't really know what was going to happen; a very strange thing to be involved in. All of it is weird, but that was a real strange moment.”
In addition to making his own music, the “Strip That Down” singer is starring in a new Hugo Boss underwear campaign. Payne said “there was a lot of tequila involved” in the photo shoot, which also features model Stella Maxwell.
For one photograph, Payne is seen standing completely naked in a window, with only part of a curtain covering him.
“I was standing there and all of a sudden it was, ‘Right, OK, take them off.’ I'm like, ‘Really? Take them off? Off, off? Like on-the-floor off? Oh, my God,’” he recalled.
“And there was a real hollow moment afterwards where I was sitting outside smoking a cigarette thinking, ‘I have basically just shot soft-core porn.’ For one, my mum is going to kill me.”