In a recent interview with The Times of London, Niall Horan opened up about the death of his former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne, who died in 2024 at the age of 31 after falling three floors from a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Horan said he was with Payne in Argentina just a few weeks before he died. When he got news of Payne’s passing, Horan said he was in immediate denial.

“I’m glad of that, it means my last memory of him was happy,” Horan said. “It still feels surreal. On day one I was, like, ‘Nah, it didn’t happen.’ Our friendship was a bond that was there forever even if we hadn’t seen each other for a while and it’s wild that one day, like the flick of a switch, he’s gone.”

Since the incident, Horan said “all our families” have remained in touch to work through the loss. He added that there is a “light and shade” to his grief.

“When I think of Liam’s passing, there is sadness, but it also makes me laugh and smirk because of the memories we had,” he said. “I’ll go to places and think of something stupid in a hotel or something random that makes me laugh. We always had good fun in Australia because we were able to get out and go to the beach. Liam wasn’t too bad at surfing. I can barely swim.”

In his upcoming solo album “Dinner Party,” which debuts June 5, there is a tribute track to Payne titled “End of an Era.” When asked about what Payne’s reaction to the song would’ve been, Horan said, “I think it’s his type of song, he liked Coldplay, he loved songs like ‘You & I’ by One Direction, songs that went somewhere.”