Louis Tomlinson Hugs His Biggest Fan on ‘Late Late Show,’ Reminisces About Horrifying One Direction Hotel Pranks

Gil Kaufman
·3 min read
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Louis Tomlinson has the most dedicated fans. James Corden proved it to him on the Late Late Show on Tuesday night (Sept. 13) when he presented the former One Direction star with a series of images featuring some of the creative signs at gigs on Tomlinson’s recently concluded world tour.

“Delayed surgery for this,” read one. “Don’t do that!” Tomlinson laughed in response. Others read, “If u want another dog I can bark” and “You’re like my tea: hot & British.” Louis said the signs definitely make him chuckle sometimes, but they’re also so distracting that if he tries to read them while singing, he often forgets his lyrics.

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The best sign, though, was from a fan who double-fisted it, with one reading, “I have Faith in the Future that I will meet u today!” along with a “To do list” that just read “Meet Louis Tomlinson” three times. That young woman, Jessica, began waiting in line many hours before the late-night show’s taping, and when Corden asked if Tomlinson could help her cross things off her list, he happily obliged and ran up into the crowd to give her a huge hug.

Louis also answered the most pressing question: How does he keep himself entertained on the road? The singer described a favorite pastime that began in his 1D days and has carried through to the present. Basically it involves torturing any member of his entourage who goes to bed a bit too early after a night of drinking. “I get a master key in the hotel, which lets me in to every single room,” he explained, recalling a time a few weeks ago when one of his managers turned in before 11.

“Didn’t do anything too bad, just screamed in his face, seen him cower a little bit and ran out,” Tomlinson explained. “Just silly antics you get up to on tour.”

Corden, however, noted that “that is actually how they torture people.” Without skipping a beat, Tomlinson then gleefully recalled that in the 1D days, they once grabbed an ice bucket of water and threw it on a sleeping security guard, then watched as the unwitting man was shocked out of his slumber after sucking up the water and thinking he was drowning.

“NO!!!” Corden yelled as Tomlinson said it was “the best” night. “That is an actual torture,” Corden and fellow guest Adrien Brody agreed. “What you’re describing as great hijinks is genuinely trauma-building for these people,” James said.

Tomlinson stuck around to play the ballad “Bigger Than Me” from his upcoming album Faith in the Future. “It was challenging coming out of a band the size of One Direction and then kind of finding your feet musically,” he said about his 2020 debut solo album, Walls. And though he’s “immensely” proud of that album, the singer described the trial and error process one goes through at the start of your career as a way of saying that Faith more clearly defines him as an artist. “It makes me really proud, definitely,” he said.

As for the most difficult question Corden had cued up for his old friend — one he said he gets pretty much every time he goes on social media — i.e., will he kidnap Tomlinson and the former members of 1D? “It makes me uncomfortable,” Corden admitted as Tomlinson wondered why anyone would want that.

“I could kidnap you and put you in a room and make you perform together one more time,” Corden surmised of the strange requests. “Are you open to being kidnapped?” he wondered.

“That’s definitely a question I’ve never been asked before,” Tomlinson said with a pleasantly concerned look. “By the right person,” he concluded, before asking what the exact process would be and then laughing when James said it would probably involve a master key of some sort.

Watch Tomlinson chat about his hotel hijinks and perform “Bigger Than Me” below.

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