One Direction Alum Liam Payne Hospitalized in Italy

One Direction alum Liam Payne was hospitalized after falling ill while on vacation in Italy with his girlfriend, Kate Cassidy, due to severe kidney pain that he was experiencing. The Sun reported that the 30-year-old singer had taken ill while the couple was staying at a property on the banks of Lake Como when he was rushed to hospital via ambulance. 

According to a source who spoke with the news outlet, “Liam is in a bad way, but he’s in the best place he can be, and finally doctors will be able to get to the bottom of what is going on… Doctors have warned him not to expect to be signed off to go home for at least another six days. They want to do every test possible to understand the issue fully but they now suspect that there has been an underlying issue for a while that has been getting worse.”

Liam Payne was recently rushed to a hospital in Milan following an "agonizing kidney pain."#LiamPayne #OneDirection https://t.co/0JOhhDu976

— Music Times (@TheMusicTimes) September 15, 2023

Payne announced to his fans last month that he was canceling his solo tour of Latin America due to suffering a “severe kidney infection,” and the problem appears to persist. Payne that he had been sober for nearly six months following heavy drinking during his time with One Direction. However, the Latin American tour cancellation came just days before he was scheduled to take the stage on his South American tour.

As he explained at the time in a video message to his fans, “Over the past week, I’ve been in hospital with a serious kidney infection, it’s something I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and doctor’s orders are that I now need to rest and recover. I was beyond excited to come play for you guys. To all of you who have bought tickets: I’m so sorry.”

This year, Payne, who has a son, Bear, with his ex-wife, Cheryl Cole, also disclosed that he spent 100 days in a Louisiana rehab facility as part of his recovery process. He said the scariest part was turning on his phone again after he had been without it all that time. The pop star revealed that he often used to empty mini-bars when he toured with One Direction before the band split up in 2015. Despite that, he said he now felt like he had “more of a grip on life.” He said to fans, “I just needed to take a little bit of time out for myself actually because I kind of became somebody who I didn’t really recognise anymore.”