Kate Cassidy was on the couch in Florida when she received a call from a friend of her boyfriend, One Direction superstar Liam Payne.
Cassidy had come home early from a trip together while Payne stayed back in Argentina. “I was in the house alone with our dog Nala, and I remember just being on the couch,” Cassidy recalled during an appearance on the podcast On Purpose With Jay Shetty. “He called me and said, ’Is Liam OK? I heard he fell from a balcony.’ And I said, ‘What? That must be a rumor.’ I was like, that’s not true at all.”
After some back and forth with the friend, Cassidy learned the brutal truth: Payne had fallen from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires and died at age 31. Several weeks later, Payne’s toxicology report detailed a mix of cocaine, alcohol and antidepressants in his system and authorities concluded that he might not have been conscious at the time of the fall.
“Sometimes I can talk about it without crying, and then other times I can’t really even speak because the way that I found out, it’s just, you know, it was just something that I never would’ve thought would’ve happened. And I’m sitting in my house, I’m all alone with my dog,” Cassidy told Shetty in what marks her first sit-down interview since Payne’s passing. She detailed that her housekeeper turned up to offer comfort, and she was followed by a swarm of friends and relatives, including her mother.
Jay Shetty and Kate Cassidy.
Courtesy of On Purpose with Jay Shetty
The On Purpose With Jay Shetty conversation finds Cassidy opening up about her relationship with the boy bander, from how they met to how she navigated his global fame (and the hate she received from fans), his struggles with addiction and mental health and the final conversation they had before she departed Argentina to fly home to Florida. On their final day together, Cassidy says they woke up, “had an amazing breakfast” in the countryside, went horseback riding and had a heartfelt parting.
“On the last day in Argentina, my car was in the driveway and we went back into the guest house, grabbed my suitcase, and we were sitting on the couch. I just kept going on and on and on about how much I love him and how much he means to me, and how much I’m gonna miss him, and that I can’t wait for him to already be back in Florida because we were starting this new chapter of our life,” she explained. “We just bought a new house. We just got a dog. We just moved to America as well. I was living in England with him for two years. We just moved to, you know, my country. It was just all these new beginnings, and it was in just such a positive light. I remember sitting there with him, and I was going on and on and on and saying to Liam how much I love him.”
She continued: “And he laughed and he interrupted me, and he just said, ‘Kate, like, you’re gonna miss your flight. Your car’s in the driveway. You’re acting like this is the last time you’re ever gonna see me again.’”
Looking back on the moment now, Cassidy described it as “chilling” in the way they said goodbye, yet she finds peace in it because it was “heartfelt” and “beautiful.” Following his passing, her friends rallied around her and tried to protect her by deleting social media apps from her phone so she could avoid all of the ghastly images that surfaced of his fall and the subsequent investigation.
Kate Cassidy.
Courtesy of On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Cassidy attended his funeral and explained that it was the first one she had ever been to in her life. “The fact that I’m 25 years old and the first funeral that I have to attend is my partner’s funeral just still doesn’t sit right with me,” she said. “It’s just mind boggling to even think that. I remember when I was trying on my funeral dress, I remember just trying it on, looking in the mirror, and I just remember thinking in my head, I just started bawling because I was supposed to be trying on my wedding dress. I wasn’t supposed to be wearing a black dress. I was supposed to be wearing a white dress and Liam was supposed to be here with me.”
See the full conversation below in which Cassidy opens up on how she’s processing the grief and trauma, their shared love of McDonald’s and how he “would always get the Happy Meal toy,” and all of the signs she says she’s received from him in recent months. “Everything reminds me of him in one way or another,” she said. “Seeing those signs make me feel so much more connected and close to him and that I know he’s here and he’s listening to me and he’s not too far.”