Zayn Malik is healing all of our teenage hearts. The former boy band member revealed that he actually has some major regrets with his time in One Direction — revealing that he “feels bad” for “not enjoying the band enough.”
“I feel like I just took things too seriously,” Zayn revealed in an interview with Zach Sang from May 2024. “I’m grateful that I’m able to be happier now. I can actually enjoy things and own my own perspective a bit. You know, like glass half full versus it being half empty. That’s my choice. I get to decide what that is.”
Zayn credited his new outlook on life to his daughter Kai, who he shares with ex Gigi Hadid. “I feel like my daughter brought that back for me, like brought that color back into my life.”
Reflecting back, the “Love Like This” performer admitted he saw himself as a “negative cloud of energy,” during his time with the band.
“I didn’t understand the importance of just trying to be happy,” he revealed. “I had this teen angst thing going on, a chip on my shoulder where I’m like, ‘It’s really cool to just be moody as f–k all the time.’”
Throughout his time with One Direction, many fans began to notice a disconnect between Zayn and the other boys — Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson — prior to his ultimate exit from the band in 2015.
At the time, Zayn said that the band “resented each other” due to the competition they felt against one another.
“And you know, we resented each other to a certain degree because we were solo artists that were put in a band, and we should have never felt that way. It should have never been a competition. It should have always been a camaraderie, and we should have always been there for each other and had each other’s backs,” he told the interviewer.
However, now looking back, Zayn’s says he can “look at it in a positive light and be like, ‘All these guys came from similar backgrounds to me. They had nothing, they worked the asses off, they wanted to sing, they got the thrown in a band.'”
Will we ever see a One Direction reunion? Maybe not, but we’re still holding on to our teenage dreams!
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