Zayn Malik Publicly Discusses Yolanda Hadid Shoving Accusations for First Time
In October 2021, Zayn Malik pleaded no contest to four criminal harassment charges in his alleged dispute with ex-girlfriend Gigi Hadid and her mother, Yolanda Hadid. For the first time, he spoke publicly about what happened in his Call Her Daddy podcast interview—and did so very diplomatically.
For context: Court documents that TMZ reviewed at the time revealed that Yolanda and Malik allegedly had a run-in at his and Gigi’s Pennsylvania home while Gigi was in Paris. Malik denied making any physical contact with Yolanda, but a court doc obtained by TMZ alleged he “shoved her [Yolanda] into a dresser causing mental anguish and physical pain.” His charge related to Gigi, multiple sources told TMZ at the time, came from what he allegedly said to her while she was on the phone during his and Yolanda’s alleged incident.
Gigi and Malik ended their on-off relationship for good shortly after news of the incident came out. They now co-parent their two-and-a-half year old daughter, Khai.
Call Her Daddy‘s Alex Cooper gently asked Malik about what happened. He said:
“For me like… I don’t tend to get involved when people say things online whether it’s got something to do with me or whether it doesn’t, because, for me the most valuable thing that I have in life is time and that takes so much time, in a toxic environment to like explain yourself to people and justify this. So I just kind of kept to myself, I knew what the situation was, I knew what happened and the people involved knew what happened too, and that’s all I really cared about… I just didn’t want to bring attention to anything, I just wasn’t trying to get into a negative back and forth with her, any sort of narrative online where my daughter was gonna look back and read that…If something happens in the family I’d rather keep that between the family, you don’t need a whole audience of people.”
Malik revealed that he and Gigi split custody evenly, and he has Khai 50 percent of the time with no additional supervision. “[I’m] hands-on with my child every chance I can be,” he said. “If I could get 60 percent [custody], I would have it, yeah.”
In fact, Khai is the reason he did the Call Her Daddy interview in the first place.
“The main thing in my mind is like trying to be a good example to her,” he said during the chat after addressing his personal journey with anxiety. “Like in terms of, you know, I can do things, and I can achieve things, and I can overcome things. And you can do this too. And to let things like, you know, a feeling stop you from doing that after having a child feels like a really small thing. Like I feel like I’ve like had to step up, you know, as, as as a man or just, you know, as a person and be this example to her that doesn’t succumb to these feelings. That’s why I’m even doing this interview. You know, like I I used to get a lot of anxiety around like having a conversation like this just in this kind of environment. And I want her to be able to look at me and be like, ‘Yo, my dad’s doing this, you know, he’s the man. He’s cool.”
Senior News and Strategy Editor
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
