Liam Payne The X Factor co-star says 'we all know truth' after death

Katie Waissel made it to the final of the ITV show The X Factor alongside One Direction back in 2010.

Liam Payne's ITV The X Factor co-star has warned "we all know the truth" in a cryptic statement after her "dear friend's" death. Katie Waissel made it to the final of the ITV show The X Factor alongside One Direction back in 2010.

Waissel said on X: "My heart is completely torn to shreds right now, I am at an absolute loss for words. If Simon Cowell dare put a statement out on the heart wrenching, tragic loss of my dear and darling friend Liam, he would be a fool.

"We all know the truth… and I’ll be sure it all comes out. #justiceforliam." Waissel retrained as a lawyer in 2023 in order to attempt to sue Syco for an alleged breach of duty of care. Waissel claimed she was left with post-traumatic stress disorder following her time on the former ITV Saturday night show.

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Speaking to the Sunday Times in 2023, she said: "There are so many of us who have been so trapped and it’s not fair, there was a huge imbalance in power. I just wanted to be able to understand [the contracts] and to protect people from being manipulated in the future.”

Former presenter of The Xtra Factor Konnie Huq said that during Liam Payne’s time on The X Factor with One Direction the make-up room’s walls were “covered in their fan mail” and very early on it was “sort of obvious they were destined to be massive”.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I’ve got this photo of them sort of sat in the make-up room, and literally the walls are covered in their fan mail, because we’d often stick up things, and it looked like already they were sort of, you know… my sort of equivalent growing up would have probably been Take That, or I could even go earlier than that.

“But … it looked like they had already made it. And this was before… I think it was maybe even possibly before we’d even gone to judges’ houses – it was really very early on. They were getting a huge amount of fan mail.

“And that is just a weird thing for when you’re not even sort of properly famous yet, to get that amount, you know, very early on. It was sort of obvious that they were destined to be massive.”