Zayn Malik wishes he'd enjoyed being in One Direction more, thought it was 'cool to be moody as f---'

"I had this, like, teen angst thing going on."

Zayn Malik’s got that one thing he’d like to change about his time in One Direction. 

The “Pillowtalk” singer, who departed the U.K. X Factor–formed boy band in 2015, has revealed that he regrets not properly appreciating being a member of the group during his tenure. 

“The main thing that I always feel bad about when I look back over my life is not enjoying the band enough,” Malik said in a recent Zach Sang Show interview. “I feel like I just took things too seriously, you know? I’m grateful that I’m able to be happier now. I can actually enjoy things and own my own perspective a bit, you know? Like, glass half full versus it being half empty. That’s my choice.”

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Malik, who was 17 when the quintet came together, explained that he “didn’t understand the importance of just trying to be happy” when he was younger. “I had this, like, teen angst thing going on — chip on my shoulder. I’m like, ‘It’s really cool to be moody as f--- all the time....’ It’s not. Like, you’re just a loser. Let’s be honest, you know what I mean?” Malik said through laughter.

The singer added, “You should be a nice person. You should be somebody that people want to be around and enjoy being in your presence, and you should bring light to peoples’ day instead of being this f---ing negative cloud of energy.”

He also credited his daughter, Khai, whom he shares with ex Gigi Hadid, for bringing “color” back into his life.

“She just makes me happier — I have so much love in me that I didn’t have before she was born,” he said. “She laughs all day. She wants to do the silliest things, and she gains so much excitement from it, you know? She just has a whole fresh perspective on life, [which] had somewhat become gray for me.”

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In the years since his departure, Malik has been open about why he chose to leave One Direction. While visiting the Call Her Daddy podcast last year, he admitted that he and bandmates Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, and Liam Payne had all gotten “sick of each other,” and that he “completely selfishly" wanted to go make his own record.

“I’m passive, but when it comes to my music and my business, I'm serious about it and I'm competitive," he said. "I wanted to be the first to go and do my own thing."

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Malik also revealed in a 2018 British Vogue interview that he doesn’t communicate with any of his former bandmates.

“I ain’t spoke to any of them for a long time, to be honest with you,” he said at the time. “That’s just the way it is. There’s things that happen and things that were said after I left… Snide things. Small things that I would never have expected.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.