Perrie Edwards, Zayn Malik’s ex-girlfriend, has decided to reveal more details about their tumultuous breakup, something we’ve been waiting for for a decade.
Perrie Edwards just told us the Zayn Malik gossip we’ve waited a decade for.
The world is a very different place from when those five boys of One Direction stole our hearts.
We’ve grown up, landed adult jobs and adult responsibilities, but let’s not kid ourselves, the One Direction fangirl in all of us went nowhere.
So, when a piece of juicy 1D gossip pops up — even if it’s a decade after the band officially split — you can guarantee we’ll be lapping it up.
When Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards — who famously dated One Direction’s Zayn Malik until they split and he swiftly moved on with Gigi Hadid — appeared on Jamie Laing’s podcast Great Company, we were all ears.
Speaking to Laing, she decided to spill some more tea about that infamous breakup, sharing inner details for the very first time.
The split is old news now, but we never really heard much about what happened at the time. Now, Edwards has given another glimpse from her side of the heartbreak. Thank you Perrie for your service.
But before we get into the new details, if you’re not yet up to date, let me catch you up on the great Zayn and Perrie split of 2015.
Edwards and Malik dated for four years after meeting on The X Factor in 2011. They ended up getting engaged in 2013 but broke up two years later in 2015. Soon after, rumours of a romance between Malik and Gigi Hadid began. By December that year, they went public with their relationship.
Zayn Malik began dating Gigi Hadid soon after his split from Perrie Edwards. Image: Getty.
Hadid and Malik dated on and off for several years before they officially split in 2021. They share their daughter Khai.
Of course, the timing of the new romance was HUGE news at the time and scandal was the word.
After the split, Edwards claimed that Malik ended their engagement via text message.
It’s a claim Malik denied.
“If you could word it exactly this way, I’d be very appreciative. I have more respect for Perrie than to end anything over text message,” he told Fader magazine at the time. “I love her a lot and I always will and I would never end our relationship over four years like that.
“She knows that, I know that and the public should know that as well. I don’t want to explain why or what I did, I just want the public to know I didn’t do that.”
Now, a decade later, Edwards claims that there was “overlap” between her relationship with Malik and his next relationship.
“I need to be careful how I say this, but there was, let’s just say, there was a bit of a…” she said before pausing for a moment. “I’m just going to say it, there was a bit of an overlap. And I think when you’re moving on with somebody else, you always get on better.
“When you’re the one left behind, that’s when it’s hard, because it’s like, ‘Oh shit, they’ve left me for someone more beautiful than me, someone better than me’. Whatever it is, that’s how it felt at the time.”
She also referred Zayn’s song Pillowtalk MV. She says the song was written about her but Hadid featured in the music video. Speak about awkward.
“Then you have a song that they’ve written about you but then someone else is in the video,” she said. “It was one thing after the other after the other.”
Edwards added that the breakup hit hard for her, not just because of the heartbreak, but because it all played out so publicly.
“I feel like the world was then looking at me, laughing at me,” Edwards told Laing about the breakup. “I felt embarrassed, I felt horrified. It was awful. It wasn’t just the heartbreak I was dealing with, I was dealing with everybody looking at me and I felt ridiculed.”
Looking back on their relationship, Edwards now sees that it was “very unhealthy.”
“You can say it was young puppy love or whatever, and you’re like whisked away with it. And I think now that I’ve experienced what healthy love is, it’s so nice,” she said. “It doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach all the time.”
Ten years on, it’s safe to say they’ve all moved on.
Malik is now single after his split from Hadid, who is now dating Bradley Cooper.
Meanwhile, Edwards is happily engaged to football player Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. They share two children.
Perrie Edwards is now engaged to football player Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Image: Getty.
The dust has well and truly settled but, of course, who doesn’t love blowing the dust off an old scandal every now and then for a new bit of juicy gossip.
