Even though Maya Henry recently served former One Direction singer Liam Payne with a cease-and-desist letter because she said her ex-fiancé wouldn’t stop contacting her and “weaponizing” his fans against her, she said she was still worried about him, given that he repeatedly told her, “I’m not well” and predicted “he would die early.”
During a podcast interview released two days before Payne’s fatal fall from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina Wednesday, Henry said the troubled 31-year-old British singer would barrage her and her family with worrying calls and messages. Henry, 23, said she once tried to get him help “but he was not taking it.”
“He would always message me, ever since we broke up, ‘Oh, I’m not well,” Henry said on “The Internet is Dead” podcast episode released Monday, according to Entertainment Tonight. The Texas-born model began dating Payne in 2019 when she was 18, and they became engaged during a “stop-start,” three-year love affair that ended in 2022, according to the Daily Mail.
“He would always play with death, and be like ‘Well I’m going to die, I’m not doing well,’” Henry also said on the podcast. “I know the lifestyle that he lives and there is a day that something is going to happen.”
Payne died Wednesday after falling multiple stories at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires. A 911 call from the hotel, placed about 10 minutes before Payne’s death, reported that a guest had taken “too many drugs and alcohol” and was in his hotel room, “trashing the whole room,” the BBC, People and other outlets reported. The caller, identified as the hotel’s chief receptionist, said that police needed to come “urgently” because the room had a balcony and the guest “may be in danger.”
Local authorities told People that Payne jumped from the balcony and that he died from multiple internal and external injuries. Other reports stopped short of saying the fall was intentional. While an investigation is underway to determine the circumstances surrounding Payne’s death, the singer had been pretty open in recent years about his struggles with drugs, alcohol and social anxiety amid the crushing pressures of global fame, the Daily Mail reported. In 2023, he revealed to his fans that he was six months sober after spending 100 days in a Louisiana rehab facility.
Like the rest of the world, Henry learned about Payne’s death Wednesday. A source close to her told the Daily Mail: “Right now, she is obviously in shock.”
OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 22: Liam Payne and Maya Henry attend the gala dinner in honour of Edward Enninful, winner of the Global VOICES Award 2019, during #BoFVOICES on November 22, 2019 in Oxfordshire, England. (Photo by Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/Getty Images for The Business of Fashion)
On the same day that Henry’s podcast interview was released, her lawyers confirmed to the Daily Mail that she had issued a cease-and-desist letter to Payne, “following the emergence of new and concerning information.”
In both the podcast episode and in a TikTok video released Oct. 6, Henry talked about how alarming his messages could be and the extraordinary lengths he would go to deliver them. She said he would “blow up my phone,” and send messages to her from different phone numbers.
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Henry said she felt torn about what to do. On one hand, she admitted that she felt “manipulated,” especially when Payne also began contacting her mother with similar warnings. On the other hand, she said, “I would always be like: ‘He’s saying these things. I have to help him because if I don’t I will never be able to live with myself if something does happen to him.”
A source, with “knowledge of the situation,” confirmed to People magazine that Payne felt “extremely overwhelmed by all the legal issues” involving Henry. Their conflicts previously came into sharp focus earlier this year when Henry published a novel, “Looking Forward,” which was seen as a fictionalized account of their tumultuous relationship.
According to the Daily Mail, the novel chronicles the relationship between a model named Mallory and a musician named Oliver, “a semi-washed up former member of the five-piece boyband 5Foward.” The book includes descriptions of the aftermath of a traumatic abortion and a scene in which the drug-ravaged musician chases his girlfriend with an ax.
Henry said that a friend of Payne’s called her and her mother before the book was published to warn them that there would be consequences. “My book was coming out, one of his friends calling me and my mom and being like, ‘This isn’t a good time for him, I don’t think you should put book the book out,’” Henry said in the podcast.
“He’s not doing well,” the friend also said, according to Henry. “If something happens to him, not only are you going to blame yourself, the whole world is going to blame you.”
But in multiple interviews and social media posts over the years, Payne spoke as if his struggles stemmed with issues within himself, revealing in a 2021 interview that he had suffered for years with “social anxiety” and “stress” from being famous, the Daily Mail reported. He also said in another 2021 interview that he had previously dealt with thoughts of suicide.
Payne’s rise to global stardom began at age 14 when he first auditioned for the UK talent show, “The X Factor,” before returning to the show two years later in 2010 when One Direction was formed. With bandmates Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson, One Direction became one of the biggest pop groups in the world. Payne said he began drinking to cope with the stress, while he admitted to podcaster Logan Paul that tensions between the band members sometimes simmered with the threat of violence, the Daily Mail reported.
After One Direction broke up in 2016, his life became “fractured” and his success “ebbed away,” according to the Daily Mail. He lived with singer Cheryl Cole, ten years his senior, with whom he had a son, Bear, now 7. After that relationship ended, he had a brief fling with former supermodel Naomi Campbell, who was 23 years his senior. His relationship with Henry, who initially appeared to be his “soulmate, soon “spiraled into trouble and obsession.”
At the time of his death, Payne was dating model and influencer Kate Cassidy, and she accompanied him to Argentina to attend an Oct. 4 concert performed by his ex-bandmate, Horan. But Cassidy left Argentina two days before Payne’s death, saying on TikTok that she needed to get home to Florida, but not revealing why Payne stayed, Page Six reported.
If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of depression or suicidal thoughts, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers free, round-the-clock support, information and resources for help. Call or text the lifeline at 988, or see the 988lifeline.org website, where chat is available.
