Liam Payne’s final onscreen performance will bring him back to where he started: a reality competition judged by Nicole Scherzinger. Payne appears in the new trailer for Netflix’s upcoming battle of the bands, Building the Band, as one of the series’ judges. Payne died on October 16, 2024, after falling from a balcony in Argentina. Netflix reportedly engaged in conversations with Payne’s family about Building the Band and confirmed the show would move forward on January 30, 2025, reportedly with Payne’s family’s blessing. The show is a combination of The Voice and Love Is Blind, with contestants needing to create bands without ever seeing one another until their first live performance. After they’re grouped together, the bands compete for judges Payne, Scherzinger, and Kelly Rowland, who are all former members of notable groups through the decades — Rowland’s from the ’90s, Scherzinger’s from the aughts, and Payne’s 1D in the 2010s.

“I need to feel that connection between you guys,” Payne tells one group in the trailer. At another point, he says, “How these bands were put together was not normal; we weren’t put together that way.” In fact, One Direction’s members all started as solo artists on U.K.’s The X Factor and were put together into a group by Payne’s co-judge Scherzinger.

The series will premiere on July 9, with host AJ McLean of the Backstreet Boys. Backstreet (and Pussycat Dolls and Destiny’s Child and One Direction)’s back, all right!

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 He will do for others what Nicole Scherzinger did for One Direction.