8 Jul 2025
Building the Band will be dedicated to the “glorious” Liam Payne, according to the execs behind Netflix’s latest juggernaut talent contest.
Guest judge Payne filmed his Building the Band scenes before he died last year after falling from a hotel balcony. After speaking extensively with the former One Direction singer’s family, Netflix decided to push on with Building the Band and the show that launches its first eps tomorrow will begin with a tribute to Payne. His sister Ruth Gibbins said on Instagram this week she is “heartbroken” that Payne will never see how “brilliant” he is on the show.
“The show is dedicated to him and that is absolutely right,” said exec Cat Lawson, who co-runs Banijay-backed Building the Band producer Remarkable. “We all loved him and I think he was amazing in the show.”
Lawson described the “huge shock” of Payne’s passing last October, which impacted the whole team. “You have to remember you get to know people really quickly and deeply [on these shows] and he was a glorious person,” she added. “None of us saw this coming.”
Payne is a judge on Building the Band alongside Nicole Scherzinger and Kelly Rowland, while AJ McLean takes on hosting duties. Although produced in the UK, the show follows 50 mostly American singers as they first listen to each other in pods without being able to see each other – making choices based only on connection, vocal talent and vibe – before forming bands and subsequently aiming to impress the judges. Six are victorious and handed a global platform to launch a musical career.
Netflix already has its Rhythm + Flow talent contest, which has been running in several territories for years, but Building the Band marks a major mainstream bet on a genre that can be a tough nut to crack. Simon Cowell’s The X Factor has been on hiatus for years while a similar talent contest Cowell is making with Drive to Survive producer Box to Box Films appears to have stalled.
Lawson and Remarkable development chief Simon Crossley have “spent 10 years thinking about the next big singing show,” she said. Crossley, a self-confessed talent show obsessive, noted that if you get them right, a quality talent show “is so rare they are almost like unicorns.”
Lawson added: “Its always a good time [for a talent show] although I think it genuinely takes time to come up with something new and fresh. The scarier the world gets, the lighter our entertainment needs to become and I feel a singing show can bring a lot of joy. [Talent shows have had] a bad rep from time to time but at their heart they are about celebrating voices.”
She shrugged off the competition from Cowell’s new show, which is not being developed for Netflix as previously reported, noting: “I’m of the opinion that there is room for more than one singing show.”
Building the Band was always forged with Netflix in mind and Lawson said the streamer’s UK team immediately had an idea for how to make a huge talent show work on a streaming platform.
“We had to hit those beats to give it a very distinct style and take it on a journey,” said Lawson. “Other shows that have tried to do bands have maybe struggled a bit to tell those stories.”
The show has more than a shade of Netflix smash Love is Blind to it. For starters, the singers begin the show in pods and can only judge fellow bandmates on voice rather than looks. As with Love is Blind, the series is divided into three distinct phases – the first being the pods, the second when contestants move in together and the third in the studio with Payne and co. Episodes will be dropped in three blocks in a bid to keep audiences on tenterhooks.
Lawson noted the Love is Blind comparison but believes the first phase of the show shifts the dial in ways that go beyond the contestants meeting ‘sight unseen’.
“The ‘not seeing’ part is quite secondary when you watch the episodes,” she added. “Bands have historically been manufactured but our starting point was about putting the power in the hands of the singers. How do you ‘Build a Band’? You’re looking for voice, but also vibe and longevity.”
The biggest challenge centered on logistics, Lawson added. Most singers had to be flown over from the States without seeing each other and things were complicated further when the UK’s airports were hit by a global outage on the same weekend. The scale was also “huge,” she said, pointing to the need for three different sets across the series and a “constantly changing shooting style.”
It was at times “agonizing” not being able to influence events playing out in the show, Lawson went on to say, but this was worth it as the biggest surprise was “how good the bands were.” Unlike The X Factor, the show does not have a record deal prize attached to it and so, while being given an enormous platform on a global streamer, the bandmates could choose to take their group no further once Building the Band drops.
“But there are really exciting things happening with the bands and I’m really proud of how they’ve all come out of the process and stuck together,” added Lawson, teasing some future success. “It was an experiment but it worked. I wonder whether record labels will look at it in the future.”
Crossley said he wants the show to help the music industry return to a time when the world’s mega bands were just as popular as the likes of Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Ed Sheeran.
“All the singers breaking through [nowadays] are TikTok singers and we noticed there is just this dearth of bands,” he added. “A TikTok star is cheaper than a band but we looked at all these TikTok singers and just thought, ‘Why not provide a place where they can find each other?’ We miss bands.”
With eyes to a second season already, Lawson is confident Building the Band can run and run.
“We only ever think about things in runs,” added the Starstruck and Deal or No Deal exec. “With a juggernaut of this scale you have to think that this will be something people will look forward to watching every single year. Nothing would make us more excited to see the bands be household names and have great careers.”