Liam Payne's failed audition for West Side Story remake (and Gary Barlow/Barhigh)
This week has been a weird one. Donald Trump being re-elected, and Gary Barlow's son becoming a meme. Gary Barlow: Dad, Gary Barhigh: Son.
I was checking out a Jimmy Fallon video from almost five years ago in which Liam mentioned that he was going to auditions, and the most memorable one was for the West Side Story remake, in which he met Steven Spielberg.
Liam also seemed to have talked about it on Capital FM Breakfast Radio (with Roman Kemp) in Apr 2019:
Err. Well I did… the first thing I ever auditioned for was for the remake of ‘West Side Story’ which is being done by Steven Spielberg. On my last birthday (29 Aug 2018) I got a message saying ‘you need to go and meet Steven Spielberg on Thursday.’ So I had to go and do an audition in front of him which was quite wild. It was a bit of a cold room I’m not going to lie. It was like all curtained off in like a big warehouse type thing and he (Spielberg) just kind of rolled in and was like “Liam!” and I was like “this is wild.” Like this is the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But he was super nice.
In the end, Liam did not get any role although he got to the "last five people," but given that the roles went to problematic Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler (perhaps both problematic consequentially?) - maybe the casting wasn't right after all.
I mention this because the audition seems to be just after when Liam and Maya Henry had their five night stand/secret fling before becoming an official couple (probably because Maya was still underage at 17), and that the Capital Radio interview is around the time when Liam reunites with Maya at Coachella a year later.
It looks like Liam's body has been flown back to the UK after 3 weeks with Liam's dad Geoff Payne and 1D security guard Paul Higgins.
We'll end with a post from former Capital Breakfast Radio presenter Roman Kemp (Son of Spandau Ballet's Martin Kemp and Wham's Shirley Kemp). It's obviously very sad as he was doing a lot of work on men's mental health given his own experience; and the suicide of a close friend, who was a producer on the breakfast radio show, during COVID. Liam and Roman were the same age as well.