Jade Thirlwall recently opened up about her friendship with Liam Payne on ITV’s The Assembly. She touchingly referred to him as her “first friend in the industry.”
Thirlwall, who found fame by winning The X Factor with Little Mix in 2011 (a year after Payne’s One Direction finished third), shared that Payne was very supportive of her. She fondly remembered him as “so lovely” and noted that everyone on the show recognized his star potential, saying he “literally had the X factor” and was “destined to be a musician and a singer.”
Thirlwall and Payne both auditioned for The X Factor when they were young, and she recounted that he was the first person she befriended in the music industry.