The reason One Direction fans are FUMING at Zara McDermott – and it’s all to do with Joey Essex

The last thing we expected to be welcomed with this morning were the news of raging One Direction fans, declaring war on the Zara McDermott, the current girlfriend of former 1D member Louis Tomlinson.

© Jamie Simonds/BAFTA via Getty Images

Zara, who found fame on Love Island and later appeared on Made in Chelsea (who could ever forget the viral bench scene?) started dating Doncaster born Louis back in 2025. Since then their romance has gone from strength to strength, with the duo often appearing on each other social media, and constantly showing support for each other.

As it always is with the fans of boyband members, they were left divided by the love affair, with half of them happy for Louis and the other seething he is dating Zara.

Well, it looks as though they are even more furious now as images have surfaced of Zara alongside TOWIE star Joey Essex, with One Direction fans taking to every platform imaginable to call out the Love Island 2018 bombshell.

‘No she didn’t 😭😭,’ one person wrote on a TikTok that was discussing the photos, with someone else claiming, ‘ZARA NO 😭 Louis is such a sweetheart and to cheat with Joey Essex is wild!’

The thing is, from the images we have seen they don’t look incriminating at all. Zara and Joey are currently filming Cooking with the Stars together and in the pap pics they appear to be sharing a friendly kiss on the cheek which seems to signal a goodbye.

With this in mind, some fans aren’t understanding the drama and seem to have the same mindset of us, in that it’s all rather platonic.

Joey ©Jo Hale/WireImage

‘It literally looks like a goodbye kiss on the cheek,’ someone commented.

Louis, Zara and Joey are yet to comment on the situation but we can’t imagine it will be long before Zara clears the air.