Nicole Scherzinger Was Texting Liam Payne on Day of His Death

Former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger and Liam Payne were so close that she was reportedly texting him on the day of his death. This is according to composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who shared the news with Billboard.

“I suppose something that hasn’t been said, and I suppose I could say, is that of course she mentored Liam, from One Direction,” Lloyd Webber said of Scherzinger, whom he’s been working with on the Broadway production of Sunset Boulevard. “On the Wednesday when he died, she was still texting him that day.”

“She’d just heard that he died and the fact that she even did the show at all is extraordinary. I mean, she is an amazing, amazing woman,” Lloyd Webber continued, noting that the “Don’t Cha” still took the stage amid her grief. “She is without any question one of the finest performers I’ve ever worked with.”

Scherzinger and Payne go way back, having first met in 2010 when he was a teenager auditioning to be on The X Factor UK. At the time, Scherzinger was a judge on the show and is said to have been one of his earliest supporters.

More recently, the two worked together as judges on Building the Band, a new talent competition series for Netflix which also features Destiny’s Child star Kelly Rowland and The Backstreet Boys’ AJ McLean. The show was greenlit by Netflix earlier this year, and filming wrapped in August. However, the future of the show is uncertain in the wake of Payne’s passing.

Payne died on Wednesday, Oct. 16, after falling from his third-floor room at the Casa Sur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Officials later reported that an investigation found Payne had jumped from the balcony.