Perrie Edwards shares why breakup with Zayn was so “hellish”

Perrie Edwards has spoken candidly about her split from Zayn Malik and said that she found it “hellish” at the time.

The former Little Mix star was in a relationship with the ex-One Direction singer from 2012, having met while competing on the eighth season of The X Factor. They were engaged for two years, before splitting in 2015.

Speaking on a recent episode of the Great Company podcast with Jamie Laing, Edwards opened up about the split for one of the first times and said that it led to her feeling “abandoned”.

“When you go through heartbreak, it is hellish,” she said. “You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You feel horrendous. You feel abandoned, and you don’t feel good enough, and you feel like you’ve been left for something better.”

She also opened up about how Zayn started a relationship with model Gigi Hadid shortly after they separated, and likely had an easier time with the split being in the public eye.

“What [made] it even worse is I felt like the world was then looking at me, laughing at me,” she shared. “When you’re moving on with somebody else, you always get on better. When you’re the one left behind, that’s when it’s hard. Because it’s like, ‘Oh shit, they’ve left me for someone more beautiful. They’ve met someone better than me.’”

Zayn and Hadid dated on and off for around six years and welcomed a daughter in 2020, before breaking up the following year. The model also featured in the video for his hit solo single ‘Pillowtalk’.

Making reference to that music video, Edwards said that there was “an overlap” between Zayn seeing her and starting a relationship with Hadid, and suggested that the song ‘Pillowtalk’ was written about her, even though it featured the model.

“I’m just gonna say it — there was a bit of an overlap,” she explained. “Then you have a song that they’ve written about you, but then someone else is in the video… It was one thing after the other after the other.

“I remember finding out about that. It was just the nail in the coffin.”

Zayn has not publicly responded to the statements made by Edwards. NME has reached out to his team for comment.

Also in the interview with Jamie Laing, Edwards has opened up about her “difficult” relationship with Jesy Nelson during their time in Little Mix. Nelson left the group in 2020, saying at the time that being in the line-up had “taken a toll on my mental health”.

Opening up about the departure from the group, Edwards said in the podcast that Nelson was “difficult” to work with, and added: “Sometimes you just won’t win with people. I don’t want to seem like a bitch, but what upsets me the most is when the other person doesn’t take accountability. That boils my blood.”

“I’m not saying she’s this fucking monster, and everything was her fault, but take some accountability for your actions and realise that you were difficult, you had difficult moments,” she added. “Granted, there was reasons for those moments, but you can only pick somebody up so many fucking times before you start losing track of your own sanity.”

Those comments align with what Edwards told NME in 2024, when she opened up about the “heartbreaking” rift between her and her former bandmate.

“We don’t talk, and haven’t done for a long time,” she said. “It’s really sad, it’s heartbreaking. But sometimes these things happen and people decide they want to part ways, and that’s absolutely fine. I would rather it went differently, but you can’t control how things go.’”

Since Little Mix announced a hiatus in 2022, Edwards shared a debut single ‘Forget About Us’ in April 2024, and dropped her debut solo album ‘Perrie’ last September. That record also featured a collaboration with RAYE, whom Edwards called “the most talented human I’ve ever witnessed in the flesh”.

As for Jesy Nelson, in January 2025 the singer announced that she was pregnant with twins. Two months later, she shared she had to have an emergency procedure after a warning that her babies “could die”. The operation was a success, and her daughters were born in May 2025.

In January 2026, Nelson revealed that she had been given news that her twins had a rare muscular condition called spinal muscle atrophy, adding that they will “probably never walk”, and she later made an appeal after a car containing her daughters’ medical equipment was stolen.