Little Mix singer Jade Thirlwall is opening up about her brief romance with Harry Styles.
While Thirlwall, 32, won the U.K. version of The X Factor in 2011 as a member of Little Mix, she previously auditioned in 2010, the same year Styles, 30, auditioned as a soloist and went on to form One Direction.
“I think we went on, like, one date … we were like 16,” Thirlwall recalled during an interview on the Monday, December 20, episode of “The Louis Theroux Podcast.”
“He’d just got put in the band. It was really funny because we kept in touch and then the minute they went on live shows, he didn’t message me back and I thought, ‘That’s it now. He’s gone. He’s made it,’” the “Angel of My Dreams” singer continued.
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Thirlwall said she and Styles ran into each other the following year on The X Factor when she was competing on the show with Little Mix. “I saw him in a room after [the show] and he was like, ‘I’m really sorry I ignored you.’”
Host Louis Theroux chimed in, “He ghosted you?” Thirlwall responded with a laugh, “Yes.”
However, Thirlwall now sees the funny side of things.
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“But I was so young it didn’t really matter,” she said.
Thirlwall went on to compliment the “Watermelon Sugar” singer, adding, “He was always very, very lovely. He’s got himself to where he is because he’s very talented and he’s very lovely.”
While Thirlwall and Styles didn’t go the distance, her bandmate, Perrie Edwards, dated Styles’ bandmate, Zayn Malik, for four years. The couple got engaged in 2013 but called it quits in August 2015.
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“From 17 to 21, I was in a relationship,” Malik said of his relationship with Edwards in a May 2024 interview with Nylon. “I was engaged. I didn’t know anything about anything at that point. I thought I did because I was 21. I was legally allowed to do everything, but I didn’t know s–t.”
“My parents were kind of old-school, so I never brought a girlfriend home or anything,” he added. “When I got the chance to do that, I jumped straight in, two feet first, and was like, ‘I’m going to have a girlfriend, and she’s going to live with me. This makes me a grown man.’”
Following their split, Malik moved on with Gigi Hadid, with whom he shares daughter Khai, 4. (The couple split in October 2021.) Edwards shares a son, Axel, 3, with soccer player Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
