When One Direction members Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson announced their separation in 2015, their millions of fans were heartbroken. Zayn Malik, who was the first to leave the group in 2015, midway through the world tour, said he was taking a break because of stress. At the time, One Direction also announced that they were taking a break, with each of the five members focusing on their solo careers.
Zayn Malik, in his first interview in almost six years, revealed that he left the One Direction band and is co-parenting his daughter Khai with Gigi Hadid. He also broke his silence on his highly publicized confrontation with Gigi’s mother, Yolanda Hadid, which ultimately led to his split from his girlfriend.
Discussing leaving One Direction with Alex Cooper on the podcast Call Her Daddy, the singer said that he knew it was time to go because something was happening. He said, “I don’t want to go into too much detail, but there was a lot of politics going on, certain people were doing certain things, certain people didn’t want to sign contracts, so I knew something was happening.”
He continued by saying that “There were obviously underlying issues, like within our friendships, too. We’ve been together every day for five years, and we got sick of each other, if I’m being completely honest. So we were close.” Adding that he can now look back on the memories, the time, and the experiences they shared in a much fonder light.
Talking about his violent confrontation with Yolanda, which led to four allegations of harassment against him, Zayn said that he felt that he had handled the situation in the best possible way and described the incident as a family issues.