In the spring of 2012, I spent a few entertaining days hanging out with the five young members of a British boy band who were just breaking big in the United States. The guys from One Direction were unjaded, unguarded, totally charming, and a puppy pile of optimism and energy. On April 8th, in a New York City hotel room, an 18-year-old Harry Styles and 16-year-old Niall Horan sat down with me for a joint interview, published here for the first time. (The reporting was intended for a Rolling Stone cover story that never ran.)
It was late morning, and they had both just rolled out of bed. Styles wore a hotel bathrobe; Horan, with braces still on his teeth, was in sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a Dallas Mavericks hat a fan had given him during a recent trip to Texas. The conversation was casual, full of laughs, and focused on their formative years.
What did you do at the gym last night?
Harry: One of our security guys, his friend’s over, he’s a personal trainer, so I was working with him, and he ripped me to shreds.
In 12 hours, you have to do Saturday Night Live. Are you ready?
Harry: Yeah, I think so. I think it’s going to be a fun day. It’s just really exciting, obviously. The show is so huge. For us to get the opportunity to be on it at all was just amazing, and to us, to be performing and just be involved with the show is amazing.
Have you seen whole episodes of it?
Harry: I’ve watched a lot of clips on YouTube. They don’t show it in the U.K.
Growing up, when did you realize you could sing or that you wanted to sing?
Harry: I sang in primary school, like the school productions, plays and stuff.
What was your first one?
Harry: The first one was…I was five, and there was a story about a mouse who lived in a church, and I was Barney, the mouse. I had to wear my sister’s tights, and a headband with ears on it, and I had to sing a song all by myself. I remember it was just like, whatever…in the second, I was Buzz Lightyear in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, so you know when they run and hide in the toy shop? Buzz Lightyear was in the toy shop, so they just created my character. The last one, I was in…you know Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat? I was the pharaoh, but I was an Elvis pharaoh.
Did you have a sense that this is what you wanted to do in your life?
Harry: I think in school, I was OK, I wasn’t a bad student. I think I just knew I wanted to entertain people and stuff. I was a bit of an attention-seeker at school.
Niall: Me, too. I just talked too much, sang too much.
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