Former One Direction star Louis Tomlinson has opened up on Steven Bartlett’s podcast about coping with his sister and mum’s death
Louis Tomlinson has spoken out about the Dan Walker BBC Breakfast row on Steven Bartlett’s podcast, five years after it took place. Back in 2020, Louis appeared on the programme where Dan and Louise Minchin interviewed him following the death of his mum and sister.
However, thigs didn’t go to plan as the BBC were reportedly sent a list of topics not to ask the former One Direction star about and his mum and sister’s death was on the list.
This didn’t stop the hosts from asking away though, which left Louis upset. Louis’ mum died in 2016 after a battle of cancer and his sister Félicité succumbed to an accidental drug overdose in 2019.
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After the interview, the singer took to social media to write: “Defo won’t be going on there again.” Dan then replied to the post as he asked why Louis was upset with the interview.
Louis responded: “I was upset that you continued to ask me about my grief. It goes without saying how hard it is to lose both people so close to me. The least I ask is that you respect my decision of not wanting to be asked in interviews about something so painful.
“I’m lucky enough to have a creative outlet for me to talk about grief. This doesn’t, however, give you the right to talk about it for gossip purposes.”
Dan then replied to Louis with: “Hi Louis. We were asking you about the song on your new album about your mum.
“We know it’s painful which is why we didn’t dwell on it. No intention to upset you or be ‘gossipy’ about it at all. That’s not our style on #BBCBreakfast.”
Louis has now spoken about what happened once again on Steven Bartlett’s podcast. He explained that the interview was an early morning slot and he was going on to talk about his single Two of Us.
Louis said: “We distinctly said ‘these are the things that are okay to mention’ and ‘do not mention these things’. But I actually, the journalist at the time who asked me directly about those things, and I’d known that we’d said don’t.”
After showing a clip of Dan asking about his family losses, Louis continued: “Sometime we might have on that list ‘don’t ask about One Direction’ or something like that, this is not what I’ve got a problem with.
“But when someone’s had their own grief and you still then going to ask those kind of questions, I find that really really troubling and then I think what was interesting was I left the interview and I took to Twitter and was like ‘I’m never f***ing working with the BBC again’ and he came back at me this journalist.”
Louis said that Dan replied by insinuating that if he wrote a song about grief, he should expect those questions. This meant that Louis said he then assumed that Dan had not experienced grief before.
He explained that he came to this conclusion as he said that someone who had been through grief wouldn’t make “such a horrible, horrible” comment which “lacked all empathy”.
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