Harry Styles Got Real About His 1D Friendships In His 'Rolling Stone' Interview

A lot has happened in the nearly five years since One Direction announced their ~indefinite hiatus~ (read: breakup). Every member has released solo projects that were successful to varying degrees, but none, arguably, more successful than Harry Styles'. Styles was always a standout member of 1D (though the members — Styles, Liam Payne, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik — always refrained from labeling any one member as the group's leader), and that seems to have followed him into his solo career. I'm not just talking about his immensely successful self-titled solo debut. After just one starring role in the Oscar-nominated Chris Nolan movie Dunkirk, his name has casually been floated around for roles in movies like The Little Mermaid live-action remake and Elvis biopics. Still, no matter how high Styles' solo star rises, one question will always follow him: Is Harry Styles friends with One Direction in 2019?

Styles sat down for an interview with Rolling Stone for its September issue to talk about his highly anticipated sophomore album, and of course they didn't miss the opportunity to ask the question on every Directioner's mind in 2019.

Some members of 1D meet up on the regular, making their enduring friendships clear to fans. Tomlinson and Payne met up at the 2016 BRIT Awards, for example.

And Tomlinson and Horan have regular banter sessions on Twitter, to the delight of fans — like the time Tomlinson revealed Horan was too scared to watch Stranger Things.

While Styles definitely doesn't have any beef with his former 1D bandmates (unlike Malik, who's made it quite clear he's not really friends with any of the members anymore), he's one of the more private members, making the current status of his relationships with 1D quite the mystery.

When asked by Rolling Stone if he took his friendships from One Direction with him when the band broke up, Styles answered pretty bluntly.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “Definitely. Because above all else, we’re the people who went through that. We’re always going to have that, even if we’re not the closest."

He did, however, get really honest about the fact that the members may not be as close today as Directioners would hope. "The fact is, just because you’re in a band with someone doesn’t mean you have to be best friends. That’s not always how it works. Just because Fleetwood Mac fight, that doesn’t mean they’re not amazing. I think even in the disagreements, there’s always a mutual respect for each other — we did this really cool thing together, and we’ll always have that," he shared.

So, does that leave room for the reunion Directioners are still holding out a teeny, tiny shred of hope for?

“I don’t know,” he told Rolling Stone about the prospect of the band reuniting. “I don’t think I’d ever say I’d never do it again, because I don’t feel that way. If there’s a time when we all really want to do it, that’s the only time for us to do it, because I don’t think it should be about anything else other than the fact that we’re all like, ‘Hey, this was really fun. We should do this again.’ But until that time, I feel like I’m really enjoying making music and experimenting. I enjoy making music this way too much to see myself doing a full switch, to go back and do that again. Because I also think if we went back to doing things the same way, it wouldn’t be the same, anyway.”

In the end, the journey he had with One Direction was too impactful for him to totally shut the door on a reunion. "It’s too important to me to ever be like, ‘Oh, that’s done.’ But if it happens, it will happen for the right reasons," he said.

As a raging Directioner, I can totally respect Styles' outlook on One Direction.