Zayn Malik was almost kicked out of One Direction

 
Staff|Agency30 August 2013
The Weekender

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One Direction have admitted they almost fired Zayn Malik from the group at the start of their career because he kept being late for rehearsals.

The 20-year-old hunk came close to being ousted by his fellow bandmates - who were put together by Simon Cowell on The X Factor in 2010 - at the start of their career, when they realised the lazy singer was always late for rehearsals.

At the press conference for their new 3D film, One Direction: This Is Us, in London today, Liam Payne talked about Zayn's precarious position, saying: "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."

Jogging the other band members' memories, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock - who shot the movie - said: "Remember he didn't show up and you were going to fire him."

Now definitely a permanent member of 1D, Zayn opened up about buying his mother Tricia Brannan her dream home in Bradford, West Yorkshire, with some of his pop earnings, and said the emotional scene from the film will stay with him forever.

The Little Things hitmaker confessed: "It was quite strange filming because it was the first time I'd actually spoken to my mum about it and she'd gone round the house. It was quite strange but it was good and it's amazing thing to do.

"I can look back on that in a few years time and I've got amazing footage of my mum seeing the house for the first time."

While the band - also made up of Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan - enjoyed their time being followed around by cameras for the fly-on-the-wall tour movie, they have no plans to ditch music for acting in the future.

Harry mused: "It was weird in a way, it was really strange having the cameras around but at the same time it doesn't make that much of a difference, there was no big set ups and stuff so it was kind of just getting on with your day."

Zayn added: "It wasn't really an acting thing, it was just like following us around ... so we won't be going into acting any time soon!"

One Direction: This Is Us is released in cinemas on August 29, 2013.

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