Nicole Scherzinger spoke with Liam Payne hours before his tragic death at 31. "I'd known he was in Argentina," Scherzinger, 47, told The Times of London in a profile published on Friday, October 3. "It was just chit-chat and pretty light." Payne, best known as one of the members of British boy band One Direction, suffered a fatal fall from a hotel balcony in October 2024. (Payne is survived by his parents, his sisters and his 8-year-old son with ex Cheryl Cole.