Liam Payne’s Cryptic Words on What ‘Rock Bottom’ Would Look Like: ‘I Don’t Even Know If I’ve Hit It Yet’

Liam Payne, who rose to stardom in the early 2010s with boppy music from British boy band One Direction, has died after falling from a third-floor balcony at his hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The exact details of Payne’s death remain unknown, and the investigation is ongoing.

Payne had been open about his mental health, and a resurfaced clip of Payne discussing “rock bottom” back in 2021 has reopened the discussion on celebrities and mental health.

Liam Payne’s 2021 interview reveals his mental health journey

Payne rose to fame as a teenager after auditioning for The X Factor. Simon Cowell liked Payne’s look and voice, so he paired him up with four other teens to create the boy band One Direction. 1D took the world by storm, becoming the biggest boy band out of the United Kingdom since The Beatles so many decades earlier. 1D had some high highs and some low lows, and the group ultimately broke up in 2015. Still, they all loved and supported each other.

But Payne was dealing with his own mental health issues for much of that time, which he opened up about in a 2021 interview with The Diary of a CEO — now, just hours after Payne’s death, clips of the interview have resurfaced.

“I was worried how far my rock bottom was gonna be,” Payne said when reflecting on his previous years. “And you would never have seen it. I’m very good at hiding it.” Those last few words seem to resonate today as fans mourn his unexpected death.

“I don’t even know if I’ve hit it yet,” Payne said, referring to the idea of his lowest point. “I can either make that choice now, and pick my last moment as my [rock bottom], or I can make a new one. I can make a whole new low. It’s my choice.”

Liam Payne’s ex Maya Henry might have predicted his death

Payne was in the middle of some legal troubles with ex Maya Henry, a model to whom Payne was engaged from 2020 to 2021. The two called things off a couple of years ago, but Henry said in a recent interview that Payne “would always play with death.”

“When I announced my book … He called my mom [and said], ‘I think I’m not gonna be around much longer,’” Henry recalled in an interview with The Internet Is Dead.

Celebrity tributes remembering Payne have poured in throughout social media, and fans around the world are mourning Payne’s loss, though it has been met with some controversy due to Henry previously telling her story about his abuse.