Despite a recent Twitter battle between Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, One Direction thanked their former bandmate at the Billboard Music Awards upon winning the award for Top Group/Duo.
Sunday’s event was their first public appearance without Malik as their fifth member. He made the announcement that he was leaving the band after five years in March.
“This one is for the fans but there is one more person we want to share this with and that’s our brother Zayn,” Liam Payne said during their acceptance speech.
Payne was also cut off in the middle of a thought, which was laughed off by the rest of the group as they exited the stage.
Earlier this month, Malik and Tomlinson showed things aren’t all that great between the ex-group member and everyone else when they started fighting on Twitter, with producer Naughty Boy in the middle of it all.
Malik has been working on a solo album with the producer. Tomlinson asked him, “How does it feel to be riding on the back of someone else's career?” but Malik came to Naughty Boy’s defense and told Tomlinson, “Remember when you had a life and stopped making bitchy comments about mine?”
image via Jennifer Graylock/INFphoto.com