Four-piece One Direction joined fellow Brit James Corden on Thursday night to speak publicly about the departure of fellow original member Zayn Malik. The group also donned short shorts to shoot a sweet dodgeball pre-taped sketch — though that battle of the sexes offered mixed results.
Always the serious interviewer, Corden asked the boys if they’d been in touch with Malik sine his sudden exodus from the uber-successful pop group.
“There’s been a bit of back-and-forth,” Louis Tomlinson admitted to Corden, drawing laughter from the members of the CBS crowd who clearly follow them both on Twitter. “We’re on good terms [now].”
“At first we were a little bit angry, honestly, we were surprised,” Liam Payne admitted. That anger has now subsided to mere disappointment, he added.
Corden pushed Harry Styles on possibly considering another British guy to fill the spot, one with “the voice of an angel [who] dance is his life.” It was a quick “No.” Sorry, James — stick with your day (late night) job.
“We were gonna call Reggie,” Styles quipped, pointing to Corden’s bandleader and sidekick Reggie Watts, who made the most of the moment.
Watch the fellas address Zayn’s exit above.
In a separate segment, the CBS host was player/coach of Corden’s Angels, a dodgeball team that did five-on-five battle with some serious-looking female athletes.
The best-of-three series against the Ball Busters was actually a little more competitive than one might expect from a bunch of harmonizers. Ultimately, the fairer sex won, and Styles took one hard below the elastic waistband of his very ’80s gym shorts.
That ought to make some teenage girls cry, and some teenage boys smile.
Watch the dodgeball video below: