Former One Direction star Zayn Malik ‘not looking for public relationship again’
By Carla Feric, Press Association Entertainment Reporter
Former One Direction star Zayn Malik has said he is “not looking for a public relationship again”.
The 33-year-old musician, who left the famous boyband in 2016, has a five-year-old daughter named Khai with American model Gigi Hadid, and the pair dated on-and-off for six years.
Speaking to the Call Her Daddy podcast, he said: “I’m not looking for a public relationship again, just out of experience.
“No offence to anybody that I have been in public relationships with before. I’ve just learned from it that it don’t work for me.”
He was also previously engaged to Little Mix star Perrie Edwards for almost two years, until the pair ended their four-year relationship in 2015.
The Bradford-born star moved to a farm in rural Pennsylvania, in the US, in 2017 and last year Hadid told Vogue that said she and Malik had a partnership based on “love, and a feeling of camaraderie”.
Malik told podcast host Alex Cooper: “My understanding of love is always developing. You know, at that moment in time, I might have thought it was love, but as I got older, I realised maybe it wasn’t.
“Maybe it was lust, maybe it was this, maybe it was that. But I don’t feel like it was love.
“Just to say this on record, I will always love Gigi because she is the reason my child is on this Earth and I have the utmost respect for her.
“I will always love her, but I don’t know if I was ever in love with her. I have so much respect for this woman and I do love her a crazy amount.”
He added: “I don’t think I was in love with her, otherwise I would have been a better version of myself.”
Malik rose to fame in 2010 as part of One Direction, formed on the ITV reality talent show The X Factor alongside Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Liam Payne, who died in 2024.
The singer left fans stunned when he left the best-selling group in 2016, and later that year he topped the number one singles and albums chart as a solo artist with his single Pillowtalk and his album Mind Of Mine.
Earlier this month, Malik released his latest single Die For Me, and announced on Instagram that his fifth studio album, titled Konnakol, would be released on April 17th.
The singer returned to performing after nine years in May 2024 with his first solo show since One Direction, as he said he wanted to show his daughter Khai that he “can do it”.
He said: “I don’t want her to be watching old videos of me in the band. It doesn’t even really look like me anymore.”
Malik also told host Cooper that his daughter wants to be a K-pop star when she grows up, and said: “I’d like to keep her away from it, but if she’s happy, I’ll support her.”
He said: “I would like to keep her away from some of the headache that this job entails.”
