Perrie Edwards Talks Zayn Malik Moving on With Gigi Hadid After Their Engagement: ‘There Was a Bit of an Overlap’
- Kris Avalon
- 17 hours ago
- 4 min read
Perrie Edwards just gave what is arguably her most candid interview to date, opening up about her past struggles with ex-fiancé Zayn Malik and former bandmate Jesy Nelson.
“Let’s just say there was … a bit of an overlap, you see, and I think when you’re moving on with somebody else, you always get on better,” Edwards, 32, claimed on the Tuesday, June 9, episode of Jamie Laing’s “From Great Company” podcast. “When you’re the one left behind, that’s when it’s hard, because it’s like, ‘Oh s***, 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.”
The Little Mix singer added that the “nail in the coffin” was seeing another woman, whom she did not name, in a music video for a song that Malik, 33, allegedly wrote about Edwards. (She did not specify the song, but Malik’s 2016 music video for “Pillow Talk” featured his then-girlfriend, Gigi Hadid. Malik and Hadid, 31, dated on and off from 2015 to 2021 and share daughter Khai, 5.)
“I had, like, serious breakdowns, because it wasn’t just the heartbreak I was dealing with,” Edwards recalled of the aftermath of her split from Malik. “I was dealing with everybody looking at me and I felt ridiculed. … I also was getting followed every two seconds and asked about it 24/7, and it was the headlines, it was everywhere, and it was a lot.”
Edwards noted that her dad struggled to see her hurting.
“I thought, ‘This is all getting a bit much.’ And then I started crying my eyes out, and then my dad started crying,” she said. “He was like, ‘I don’t know how I can take this pain away.’ And I’m like, ‘You can’t, nobody can. This is hellish.’”
Edwards and Malik met on The X Factor UK in 2011 and began dating shortly after. The pair got engaged in 2013 but ultimately called it quits in 2015.
“There’s so much that people don’t know about that I would never say, even though I’ve just spilled some beans, but there’s so much that went into it — that I would never talk about — that I went through,” Edwards continued.
Edwards claimed that her breakup from Malik made her realize the relationship dynamic was “very unhealthy.”
“And that, I mean, you can say it was young puppy love or whatever, and you’re like whisked away with it,” she said, adding that she has since experienced “healthy love” with fiancé Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, whom she began dating in 2017. The couple share son Axel, 4, and daughter Alanis, 4 months.
“It’s so nice. It doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach all the time. It doesn’t make you feel itchy,” Edwards said of her romance with Oxlade-Chamberlain, 32. “It doesn’t make you feel like you’re not worthy or you’re not good enough or you could be doing everything better. And it doesn’t feel competitive. It doesn’t feel toxic. Like, that’s exactly what I would say it was. It doesn’t feel like that when you experience it the good way.”
As for where she stands with Nelson — who recently aired out her grievances with Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall in a new documentary and claimed that the group members didn’t support her through various mental health issues — Edwards said, “Sometimes you just don’t win with people.”
“What upsets me the most is when the other person doesn’t take any accountability,” she continued. “That boils my blood. I’m not blaming everything on you. I’m not saying she’s this f–king monster, and everything was her fault. But take some accountability for your actions and realize you were difficult. You did have difficult moments.”
She continued, “You can only pick somebody up so many f–king times before you lose track of your own sanity … I thought I’d tried anything. So to then sit there in further interviews and discuss it publicly and be like, ‘I wasn’t supported.’ You were, though.”
Edwards added that she’d previously hoped to rekindle a friendship with Nelson, but not anymore. “Part of me wanted to until the documentary, and then part of me withdrew again,” she added on the podcast. “I haven’t got a bad bone in my body, but I can cut you off. I can forgive, but I don’t want you in my space.”
The documentary in question is titled Life After Little Mix, a six-part series that premiered on Prime Video in February. In addition to exploring Nelson’s difficult parenthood journey after becoming a mom to twin girls with spinal muscular atrophy in 2025, the doc includes the “Boyz” singer saying that she left Little Mix in December 2020 because she felt ignored and misunderstood by the other three members. Nelson also claimed that one of her bandmates had expressed wanting to leave the group before her.
After that, Edwards, Pinnock and Thirlwall continued group activities as a trio, releasing album Between Us in 2021. Edwards is now in the midst of a solo career, most recently releasing her single “Passenger Princess” in May.
Watch Edwards’ full interview on Great Company With Jamie Laing below.
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