TikTok star who mocked Liam Payne breaks silence after singer's 'tragic' death
TikTok star Max Balegde, has broken his silence following the death of former One Direction star Liam Payne. The content creator, who boasts 3.6million followers on the platform, rose to prominence for his chaotic and comedic videos. Since then, he's dipped his toe into the world of presenting, interviewing the likes of Louis Theroux, The Rock and Millie Bobby Brown and has his own podcast called The Useless Hotline.
However, Max also famously made videos mocking Liam, regularly poking fun at the singer - filming one video in which he reacted to the singer's "cringiest" moments. However, after the news of Liam's tragic passing last week in Argentina, Max has removed the videos from his account.
On Wednesday, October 23, Max took to Instagram in his first social media post since Liam's death. In a statement, Max said: "Hey guys - you might have noticed that I've been away from socials for a few days, and I've had a lot of people ask me why I took down my videos about Liam Payne. The reason for both of these is out of respect to this tragic news.
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"I always want my pop culture based content to be light hearted, so it of course didn't feel right to leave those videos up given the awful news. Sending love to everyone affected by this loss."
Previously, Max came under fire for wearing a controversial t-shirt to Capital's 2022 Summertime Ball. He was photographed at the event in a T-shirt, which featured a snippet from a viral Liam interview. Max, who spoke a lot of the viral moment on his TikTok channel, sported a white top which read: 'If you don't remove those hands there's a high likelihood you'll never use them again."
Former X Factor star Katie Waissel called for the influencer to be fired from Capital FM's network, quoting legislation about harassment. The singer, who appeared on the seventh season of the ITV show alongside One Direction, quote tweeted a picture of Max in the shirt that was shared to the radio station's account.
The tweet read: "This is your employee - Under the Public Order Act 1986, s4A (1)(b) A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting."
Max responded to the tweet, writing: "Me begging to not be jailed for wearing a quote on a T-shirt," with a video of Katie performing Don't Give Up On Me by Solomon Burke during her time on The X Factor. The T-shirt quote references a segment of Logan Paul's Impaulsive podcast where Payne discussed a time in the five-member group where an unnamed band member pinned him up against a wall backstage. During the interview he also made comments suggesting that he was the most successful soloist of the band after the group disbanded in 2015.
"We did the first song…a billion streams,” Payne said on the podcast. “I think it outsold everybody within the band and I was the last to go, and I never expected that.” He also admitted to disliking his former bandmate Zayn Malik, who famously left the band before their hiatus. In the interview, Payne said: "There's many reasons why I dislike Zayn and there's many reasons why I'll always, always be on his side." However since widespread backlash he has since apologised for the comments, taking to Twitter to clear the situation up.
"Guys - I wouldn’t normally comment on this stuff but when it's your family it’s hard to let it slide," he tweeted, "They mentioned a specific incident involving Zayn which I responded to - but listening back maybe I didn’t articulate myself as well as I could have."
In another tweet, he added, "I was saying that there will always be things we disagree on but that I will always, always be on his side. That’s family. Zayn is my brother and I will stand by him forever." Zayn is thought to have sent a cryptic response to his bandmate posting an unexpected 8-second video of himself singing One Direction's 2013 hit You & I to his Instagram on Saturday (June 11).
