Zayn Malik Admits He's Only Been in Touch With One Member of One Direction
Zayn Malik may not have "four friends for life," but he seems to be on good terms with at least one of his former One Direction bandmates.
Apparently, Liam Payne is the only member of the boy band who is still in contact with Zayn.
"I'm still probably the closest to Liam," the 23-year-old said in NME's latest cover story, on newsstands Thursday. "We talk on the phone. He congratulated me on my single, which was nice. I congratulated him on his Brit Award. It was a good chat. We haven't met up in a long time so we want to meet up."
READ: Zayn Malik Says He Wasn't Allowed to Grow a Beard or Dye Hair While in One Direction
The "Pillowtalk" singer admits that he hasn't seen any of the 1D guys since breaking from the band in 2015, and echoes an earlier statement regarding the cold shoulder he's received from Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan.
"I tried to have contact but nobody's reached out. So... whatever," Zayn said.
In a separate feature story for Billboard magazine earlier this year, Zayn had hinted that he was surprised by the remaining band members' chilly response to his exit from the group.
"The truth of it is," he said, "you can think one thing about a situation and the total opposite can happen. I had every intention of remaining friends with everybody, but I guess certain phone numbers have changed and I haven’t received calls from a lot of people. I’ve reached out to a few of them and not got a reply. Certain people have pride issues, but it’s stuff you overcome in time."
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Payne was out sick when ET caught up with 1D in November, but the guys still insisted that there was no bad blood between them.
"I think in any field of work when you lose someone on your team, obviously it's hard, but the positive take on the situation is we felt we definitely got closer as a group," Tomlinson explained. "We sat down and spoke about it -- this is something we all still want to do, so in the end we actually bonded together tighter, I think."
Zayn's debut solo album, Mind of Mine, will be released on Friday.