Not over it? Hailee Steinfeld had an uncomfortable reaction when one of Niall Horan‘s songs started playing during her livestream with fans on Instagram.
The Pitch Perfect 2 star, 23, took to Instagram Live to promote her latest single, “I Love You’s,” when a new tune by her ex-boyfriend, 26, caught her by surprise. Steinfeld was in the middle of a sentence when she heard Horan’s “Black and White” in the background, cringed and quickly turned around to tell her sister to change the song. The song is one of many that fans believe was inspired by the end of Horan’s romance with Steinfeld.
Us Weekly confirmed that the Dickinson actress and the former One Direction member had called it quits in December 2018 after first being linked to each other that January. A source told Us at the time that even though the pair still had “a lot of love for each other,” neither one of them had “time for a relationship.”
Before her split from Horan, Steinfeld revealed to Us that she was “a very private person” and wanted to maintain some boundaries between herself and her fans when it came to her personal life and relationships. However, when the Oscar nominee geared up to release a her single “Wrong Direction” in December 2019, fans were quick to put together the clues that the song was an apparent nod to her brief relationship with the former boybander.
“Thankful for all the lessons, the love, the heartbreak, & the memories,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories at the time, posting a series of photos she had taken throughout the year as fans speculated that a “diss track” was coming their way.
Horan, for his part, has openly admitted that his sophomore record, Heartbreak Weather, was inspired by his breakup. In September 2019, the X Factor UK alum told The Sun that the album contained some of the saddest lyrics he’d ever written, especially on the ballad “Put a Little Love on Me.”
“It wouldn’t be my album if it didn’t have a sad, sad, sad ballad on it,” Horan said at the time. “This could potentially be my favorite song I’ve ever written. I’d just gone through a breakup and it was all very real. It was very easy to sit down at the piano and speak and see what happens.”
