Liam Payne set to appear in upcoming Netflix show filmed before his death

Liam Payne is set to appear as a judge on an upcoming Netflix competition show filmed months before his death.

During the Thursday, Jan. 30, Next on Netflix event, Brandon Reigg, Netflix’s Vice President of Unscripted and Documentary Series, said the streaming platform is pushing ahead with “Building the Band,” which was Payne’s last major television appearance.

According to a Deadline report, Reigg said Netflix has been in touch with Payne’s family about moving forward with the project. Although the streaming platform hasn’t announced a release date for “Building the Band,” the series is confirmed for a 2025 premiere.

Payne was a judge on “Building the Band” alongside Destiny’s Child’s Kelly Rowland and The Pussycat Dolls alum Nicole Scherzinger. Contestants on the show must form bands without seeing the other members, like a musical version of “Love Is Blind.”

“‘Building the Band’ is a brave and bold undertaking for all involved as we hand over power to the singers themselves to form their own band based on chemistry first,” the show’s executive producer Cat Lawson said in a statement to Billboard in August 2024. “With looks out of the equation, can they create a deeper connection with their bandmates?”

Filming for “Building the Band” wrapped in August 2024, ending with three live shows in Manchester. Two months later, Payne died at the age of 31 after falling from a third-floor balcony at a hotel in Buenos Aires. A postmortem determined his cause of death to be “multiple trauma” and “internal and external hemorrhage” as a result of the fall.

A tribute to Payne is expected to take place during the Brit Awards on Saturday, March 1. There’s been speculation that Payne’s former One Direction bandmates will reunite for the occasion, marking their first time on stage together since the group split in 2016. Speculation of a reunion has recently increased after Zayn Malik revealed Louis Tomlinson was at his recent “Stairway to the Sky Tour” stop in Los Angeles.