Nicole Scherzinger was texting Liam Payne on day he died: report
Nicole Scherzinger was reportedly in touch with Liam Payne on Oct. 16, the same day he fatally plunged to his death.
According to Andrew Lloyd Webber, who composed the music for her Broadway musical “Sunset Blvd.,” the Pussycat Dolls alum, 46, was texting the One Direction singer, 31, while he was in Argentina before his sudden death.
“I suppose something that hasn’t been said, and I suppose I could say, is that of course she mentored Liam, from One Direction,” Webber told Billboard in an interview published on Thursday. “On the Wednesday when he died, she was still texting him that day.”
After learning of Payne’s death, Scherzinger still performed as Norma Desmond in the Broadway production — a move Webber applauded her for.
“She’d just heard that he died,” he explained, “and the fact that she even did the show at all is extraordinary. I mean, she is an amazing, amazing woman. She is without any question one of the finest performers I’ve ever worked with.”
The Post has reached out to Scherzinger’s rep.
The singer was always in Payne’s corner.
She was a judge on “The X Factor” when One Direction was created. Resurfaced footage showed Scherzinger, not Simon Cowell, was the one who suggested putting Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Payne in the boy group instead of allowing them to compete as individuals.
Payne passed away earlier this month after falling from his third-floor balcony at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The boy band alum fractured his skull and died instantly from “very serious injuries,” according to Buenos Aires Emergency Services Chief Alberto Crescenti. He also suffered internal and external hemorrhages in the skull, thorax, abdomen and limbs, which “contributed to the mechanism of death,” per the autopsy.
However, Payne had a toxic cocktail of drugs in his system that also appeared in his preliminary autopsy report.
The singer had “pink cocaine,” known as Tusi, — a combination of methamphetamine, ketamine and ecstasy — benzodiazepine, crack and cocaine in his bloodstream, according to ABC News.
The hotel was raided on Wednesday evening, with law enforcement seizing computer hard drives and hotel surveillance footage, reported the AP.
Police are working overtime to find out who supplied Payne with the drugs and have interviewed several hotel employees.
Law enforcement sources told TMZ that cops are looking into a theory that a staffer possibly delivered the drugs to Payne in a Dove soap box that was photographed in his trashed hotel room.
Before his fatal fall, eyewitnesses said the One Direction star was “acting erratic” in the hotel lobby. The facility’s manager backed that up in the 911 call, claiming Payne was “breaking up the whole room” while noting the singer had a balcony and expressing concern he might harm himself.
