The team behind Netflix’s Building the Band is feeling the loss of Liam Payne extra hard this week, with the show premiering Wednesday (July 9) on the streaming service following the One Direction star’s sudden death nine months prior.
And in the opening moments of the competition series’ first episode, AJ McLean — who hosts Building the Band — paid tribute to his late friend. “When we came together to film Building the Band, we never imagined we’d soon be saying goodbye to our friend Liam Payne,” the Backstreet Boys member tells the camera.
“Liam is a guest judge in later episodes, and through his presence, we see his deep love for music and his unwavering commitment to helping others find their voice,” McLean continues as a quick montage of Payne’s scenes on the show play. “It’s through that spirit that we dedicate this series to Liam and his family.”
Building the Band was one of the last projects Payne worked on before his death last October. About two months after wrapping filming in August, he suffered a fatal fall from the fourth-floor balcony of his hotel room in Buenos Aires. High levels of alcohol and other substances were in his system at the time of his death, toxicology reports later confirmed.
During their time together on the show, McLean and Payne bonded over their similar histories as boy band stars. Both musicians have also been open in the past about their struggles with sobriety, with McLean saying that they shared “a lot of parallel life experiences” in a recent interview with Today.
In the same interview, McLean also revealed that he had heard the unreleased music Payne was working on while filming Building the Band. “I thought that was really sweet that he would entrust someone that he’s still learning about to give their opinion,” he told the long-running NBC morning show. “I thought it was a great body of work. And I hope that the world and that the fans get to hear it somewhere down the road. It’s beautiful, beautiful music.”
Also starring Nicole Scherzinger and Kelly Rowland as judges, Building the Band separates hopeful singers into closed-off pods, where they then seek to assemble a musical group before ever seeing one another. The first four episodes are available to watch now, while the second and third batches of episodes will arrive July 16 and July 23, respectively.
After Payne’s death, Netflix got his family’s blessing to move forward with the show. And after a trailer for the show premiered in June, his sister Ruth Gibbins opened up about how meaningful it was to watch her brother shine onscreen.
“Im heartbroken he never got to see how great he is in this show,” she wrote on Instagram Stories at the time. “He knew he had done a good job, we all told him this when we were at filming, but watching it back, wow!”
