Today, in “Welp, this was probably inevitable” news: Variety reports that ABC News and Nightline are gearing up to release a Hulu special about Liam Payne’s death, just eight days after the fact. Branded as part of the studio’s Impact X Nightline TV magazine series—the same show that brought you stories like “What Happened To Matthew Perry?”, “Andrew Tate: Into The Manosphere,” and “Only Fans: Not Just For Sex”— the new report, One Direction: Liam Payne’s Final Days, will broadcast online on Thursday. The logline for the special presumably gives us a taste of the tone: “Drugs, a trashed hotel room, and a deadly fall: How One Direction’s Liam Payne tragically died. The boy band singer’s sudden death sparked renewed questions about the dark side of fame. How did the 31-year-old’s brilliant star fade so dramatically?”
Payne died on October 16, with the details surrounding his death from a fall from a hotel balcony in Argentina still murky. (Reports of career troubles, relationship crises, and other issues, both personal and professional, have filtered out in the week since his death, along with the usual slate of tributes from bandmates and contemporaries.) It’s extremely difficult, then, to believe that Impact X Nightline is the place where a clear portrait of the truth will actually be painted—especially since the show’s press copy suggests that its definition of “those close to Payne” includes Irish singer Mary Byrne, who briefly lived alongside the One Direction boys when they were all on The X Factor together back in the early 2010s. Other interview subjects for the special include “social psychologist Dr. Azadeh Aalai, One Direction fan Natalie Barada, and ABC News contributors Chris Connelly, Kelley Carter, and Megan Ryte,” and nobody who appears to have been actually close to Liam Payne, so… yeah.
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