Zayn Malik Almost Kicked Out of One Direction for Being Late to Rehearsals, Says 'This is Us' Director [VIDEO]
Zayn Malik was almost kicked out of One Direction after not cooperating with the band's grueling rehearsal schedule.
The 20-year-old United Kingdom native was close to leaving the group after constantly appearing late for rehearsals. Liam Payne and the director of the band's new film made the revelation at the official movie This Is Us press conference Tuesday, according to Mirror.
"The first week we got together it was all a bit strange trying to get people together for rehearsals. Still to this day it's a struggle to get Zayn out of bed," he said, to which This Is Us director Morgan Spurlock interjected by telling the singers, "Remember he didn't show up and you were going to fire him?"
Each member of One Direction - Payne, Malik, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan - failed to make it through to boot camp in The X Factor: U.K. as solo artists. They were put together to form a band by one of the show's judges, Simon Cowell, in 2010.
This Is Us will hit theaters in the United Kingdom on Aug. 29 and in the U.S. the next day. Spurlock said the 3D film will be "five times better than anything else similar" because there are five different stories to tell, referring the individual singers.
A clip from the documentary, shown below, revealed that Malik has a love of graffiti and has an entire room with spray-painted walls. Mailk said the part he was most looking forward to in the movie was seeing his mother's reaction when she first walked into the house he bought her, shown in the trailer below. Malik's mother calls to thank him for the house while crying and he jokingly replied, "well get off the phone then before I start crying."
"It was amazing for me because I can look back and see when she first saw her house," Malik said of watching the memory on-screen.
