Sitting with the Call Her Daddy podcast for his first major interview in six years, ZAYN explains to host Alex Cooper why he never directly addressed the 2021 incident in which he allegedly got physical with Yolanda Hadid, grandmother of his daughter, Khai.
“I don’t tend to get involved when people say things online…because for me, my most valuable thing that I have in life is time,” he said. “That takes so much time…to explain yourself to people and justify this [and that], so I just kind of keep to myself.”
“I just wasn’t trying to get into a negative back-and-forth …[or] any sort of narrative where my daughter was gonna look back and read into it,” he added. He and the people involved knew what really happened, he said, and “that was “all I really cared about.”
Cooper pointed out that ZAYN currently has 50% custody of Khai, and had something really violent actually happened, he wouldn’t.
“For sure, yeah…I’m super full-on, hands-on with my child every chance I can be,” ZAYN replied, adding, “If I could get 60 percent … I would have it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, ZAYN reveals he wanted to be the first to leave One Direction because he saw the writing on the wall.
“There was a lot of politics going on. Certain people were doing certain things, certain people didn’t want to sign contracts, so I knew something was happening. So I just got ahead of the curve ….I was like, ‘I’m just going to get out of here, I think this is done."”
As for his new music, ZAYN says, “It’s a different sound for me. And it’s got some more narrative going on…my daughter’s mentioned in there a couple of times.”
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