Zayn Malik is speaking out about the infamous confrontation between him and the mother of his former girlfriend, Gigi Hadid. Two years after pleading no contest to harassment charges over the alleged ordeal, the former One Direction member appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast for what seemed like a quick PR cleanup ahead of the release of his hotly anticipated single “Love Like This.”
Speaking delicately about the subject, host Alex Cooper asked Malik if he had anything to say in response to his highly publicized fallout with the Hadid family. The 30-year-old singer was mostly vague about the incident, but still seemed bothered that it wasn’t kept private.
“If something happens in the family, I’d rather keep that between the family,” he said. “You don’t need a whole audience of people with opinions because it’s hard enough to manage between two.”
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In 2021, Malik was charged on four counts of harassment after getting into an argument with Yolanda Hadid on the Pennsylvania estate that he and Gigi shared at the time. Allegedly, Malik called Yolanda a “fucking Dutch slut” and shoved her into a dresser, reportedly over a dispute involving his and Gigi’s young daughter, Khai. Malik pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 360 days of probation as well as anger management classes.
Following the incident, Malik told TMZ that he “adamantly denie[d]” Yolanda’s allegation that he struck her. He also released a statement on Instagram not-so-subtly accusing the Hadids for leaking details of the confrontation to the press. Additionally, he claimed that he only pleaded no contest for the sake of his daughter.
“I don’t tend to get involved when people say things online, whether it’s got something to do with me or whether it doesn’t,” he said on Call Her Daddy. “Because for me, my most valuable thing that I have in life is time. And that takes so much time, in a toxic environment, to explain yourself to people and justify things. I knew what the situation was, I knew what happened and the people involved knew, too. And that’s all I really cared about.
“I just didn’t want to bring attention to anything and wasn’t trying to get into a negative back and forth with [Yolanda], or any sort of narrative online where my daughter was gonna look back and read that,” he added. “I believe I dealt with it in the best way, in an amicable respectful way, and that’s all that needs to be said.”
Despite his sentencing, Malik has mostly been spared by the court of public opinion on social media. The former boybander’s fanbase has largely rallied around him, even denying Yolanda’s claims based on her somewhat negative reputation on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Cooper even noted that Mailk still had joint custody of his daughter, implying that what “we’ve all read online” may be false. (It should be noted, though, that there's plenty of evidence showing that fathers are favored in custody battles, despite allegations of abuse.)
Elsewhere in the podcast episode, Malik was asked about his infamous, abrupt departure from One Direction in 2015, which he confirmed was less about bad blood among the group and more about his own musical aspirations.
“I completely, selfishly wanted to be the first person to go and make my own record, if I’m being completely honest with you,” he told Cooper. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna jump the gun here for the first time.’ I’m a passive dude. But when it comes to my music and my business, I’m serious about it, and I’m competitive. So I wanted to be the first to go and do my own thing.”
The musician said he could also sense other members of the band plotting to leave the group.
“Certain people were doing certain things,” he continued. “Certain people didn’t want to sign contracts. So I knew something was happening [and] I just got ahead of the curve.”
Malik’s words about the chart-topping group were certainly less controversial than that of his former 1D bandmate Liam Payne, who exposed the tensions within the band in a viral Logan Paul interview last year. Whether his comments about the Hadids will incite a response from the family, meanwhile, remains to be seen.
