Louis Tomlinson's heartbreaking promise to dead mum – that still drives him today

Louis Tomlinson has spoken about how grief has impacted his life and deaths of loved ones made him feel “guilty” – but he now has a “new sense of life” and is in love again.

In a revealing interview the former One Direction star spoke of losing his mother Johannah Deakin in 2016 around the height of his fame. His sister Felicity died from a fatal combination of drugs in March 2019 and close friend and former bandmate Liam Payne died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires last year.

But the interview with Steven Bartlett for his Diary of a CEO podcast had more upbeat moments as he mentioned being in “love” with new girlfriend Zara McDermott and also feeling positive about his life now.

READ MORE: Lou Teasdale shares heartbreaking regret over friendship with 'lost' Liam Payne

READ MORE: Louis Tomlinson heartbreakingly reflects on Liam Payne's 'unjust and frustrating' death

 

Singer Louis, 33, said losing his mum aged just 42 to leukaemia was very difficult to cope with.

He recalled: “Obviously, there’s no good time for anything like this, but I think the timing created a bit of…true resentment for the world. Like, real resentment. Just feeling really hard done by.

“One thing I remember about grief, when you’re in the midst of it, you could stub your toe, right? And something like that is just utterly unjust. Little things like that I really struggled with when I was grieving. Because of the weight of stuff that had happened, there was just a moment in my life, for about six months, where it felt like I couldn’t win, and in fact, I could only lose.”

He agreed to perform on stage with One Direction three days after her death as he had promised her he would but said the three-and-a-half minutes on stage were the most challenging of his life.

Moving on to discuss his sister Felicity, he added: “I couldn’t believe how deeply unlucky we’d been as a family. Maybe it’s not overly uncommon…but at the time, I felt angry at life and I felt angry on behalf of my family.

“I wouldn’t be thinking, ‘What have I done to deserve this?’, it was more Daisy and Phoebe are so young, and Lottie [his sisters] as well. They’ve already had so much to deal with. Why this and why now? It did feel incredibly, incredibly unfair.”

“I’d been worried about Felicity for months prior as I was worried about all my sisters. The doorbell rang at one in the morning or something, maybe midnight, and I had this feeling come over me straight away… they told me that she had passed away and I literally was like, ‘Okay’, I can’t tell you why. Not only was I in denial at the moment, I just refused to compute it.”

When Liam Payne died, it took Louis back to that time again. He explained: “I had the same feeling that I had with Felicity, and I think anyone has this when they’re around someone who’s struggling; my 150% wasn’t nearly enough. And that’s when it’s my own arrogance thinking that I could have helped really, because it was so much deeper than what I could have done for him. He was definitely struggling at that time in his life.

“I think that was a tough thing for all of us, working out ‘Who am I outside of Liam in One Direction? Louis in One Direction? Who am I? What does that look like?’ And that question’s intimidating.

“I could just go on and talk all day about how amazing he was, but I think we all looked up to him. I don’t think we would have been brave enough to say at that age when I was in the band, I think I would’ve had too much pride, but we all looked up to him massively.”

Although he is good friends with Zayn Malik and they are set to work together again, Louis said he felt much closer to Liam than the other band members and their conversations were more in-depth. This also makes it harder for Louis to believe he has gone.

On discussing life after One Direction with other band members, Louis said: “To be honest, that would only happen between me and Liam. Between me and the other boys, not that it’s not emotional because it is, and it’s definitely deeper than surface level, but I would struggle to text the other boys as much [...] it’s just all a bit small talk. Which is lovely, and it’s nice to catch up like that, but me and Liam would always speak on a much more deep level [...] I feel bad saying this because I feel arrogant but I shouldn’t, but I wanted to look after him. That was a role I feel like I was there to play.”

He added: “I would say he [Liam] was the closest to being my brother. Love him deeply, could spend hours and hours and hours with him, but there was an element of always checking in and just making sure that he was cool like that.”

The interview also features more upbeat themes as Louis discusses his new album How Did I Get Here? Which comes out in January and his newfound happiness as inspiration. In recent months he has begun dating documentary maker Zara McDermott.

And he said: “I’m a deeply, deeply romantic person. It’s also easy to to be romantic when you are a creative. I really struggle to write in a fictional sense, I really struggle.

“For me, I have to have been living it, it has to be real to me. So if I wasn’t feeling so good, like right now, I wasn’t feeling so in love…the record probably would have a slightly different feel to it.”

He added: “One thing I was thinking about with this record, my intention is just to maybe feel good. I know that’s a really cliche and obvious thing to say, but I’m not sure some of my other music did that.

“It made you feel, it was honest, it was painful at times, but it didn’t feel good. So I think now I’ve got this almost new sense of life, a new sense of happiness, and purpose, and fulfilment, all those things.”

And taking inspiration from the Gallagher brothers, Oasis fan Liam also admitted he would not rule out a One Direction reunion one day.

Liam went to see Oasis during their UK comeback shows. And he said: “Never say never, right, but I’m just not sure it would be right to him. Say for the sake of argument, 25 year’s time, it’s like a f*cking Oasis thing, they offer us an arm and a leg, and they’re like, ‘Come back and do this many shows’, I don’t know.

“It’s just completely put a pin in all of that. And the irony is, there was no one campaigning for One Direction to get back more than Liam. I would say I came in a close second.”

• The full interview with Louis is on the latest Diary Of A CEO podcast, out now.

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