Perrie Edwards has revisited the end of her engagement to Zayn Malik, saying on a June 9 podcast episode that there was “a bit of an overlap” as the relationship was ending and he was moving on with somebody else.
The remarks landed this week because they put fresh public attention on a breakup that has already followed Edwards for years. She said the split left her having “serious breakdowns” and that she felt watched “every two seconds,” with people asking about it “24/7” as the story played out in public.
Edwards made the comments on Jamie Laing’s From Great Company podcast, describing a breakup that began after she and Malik met on The X Factor UK in 2011, started dating soon after and got engaged in 2013 before calling it quits in 2015. She said the “nail in the coffin” was seeing another woman in a music video for a song she believed Malik had written about her.
The woman was not named directly by Edwards, but the video in question was Malik’s 2016 “Pillow Talk,” which featured his then-girlfriend, Gigi Hadid. Malik and Hadid dated on and off from 2015 to 2021 and share a daughter, Khai, who is 5.
That is where Edwards’ account carries its sharpest edge. She said she believed the timing meant Malik may already have been moving on before their breakup was fully over, and she described how painful it felt to be the one left behind, comparing it to seeing someone “more beautiful” or “better” than her. In the same interview, she said the relationship dynamic was “very unhealthy.”
Edwards has since said she found “healthy love” with fiancé Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, whom she began dating in 2017. The two share son Axel, 4, and daughter Alanis, 4 months. But the June 9 remarks show that the old split still carries weight for Edwards, and the unanswered piece is the one she would not spell out: what, exactly, happened in the overlap she described.
