-Let me be the first to say congratulations,
'cause it's midnight.
Officially, your album is out right now.
-Yes. Yes, yeah.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Congratulations. -Thank you.
Yeah, I've been waiting for a while, man.
It's like four years in the making.
-Yeah. I want to get into this,
but first I want to talk about young Louis back in England.
I heard stories that you at one point wanted to become an actor.
Is that true? -Yeah, kind of.
[ Laughter ]
It's not funny yet.
[ Laughter ]
Yeah, I started going --
My twin sisters, they started doing some filming
'cause they're identical.
And films would use them 'cause they could actually,
you know, they could use less time 'cause they look the same,
so they could pay less. -Yeah.
-Smart. -Very smart.
-So I start going down with me sisters,
and my mum kind of hustled me a few times extra roles.
So because of that, after I did a couple of them,
I did like maybe three or four acting lessons
but not proper, not proper.
I never had a line or anything like that.
They never gave me one. -No, they didn't.
-No, no. Obviously, I'm not good enough.
Do you know what I mean?
-Well, you're great -- -Bull[bleep] Bull[bleep]
-But, I mean, did you ever do plays or anything?
-Yeah.
That, I'm not going to lie about.
So, I'd just failed my "A" levels at this one school,
which is like the higher education in England.
And I'd been at that one school the whole time,
and then I moved to this other school called Hall Cross
And I remember seeing on like the second day being there
that there was auditions for "Grease."
And I wasn't sure that it was the best way
to announce meself as a new kid.
Also, where I grew up in the North of England, Doncaster,
it wasn't that cool to do plays, do you know what I mean?
So, I was a little bit tentative to get involved.
But in the end, me mum pushed me to do it,
and then I got Danny, and I absolutely loved it.
And that's probably why --
I mean, I reckon it gave me the bug.
It gave -- Oh, whoa, yeah, absolutely.
It gave me the bug. It gave me the bug, I think.
-You got the bug to do it all.
And you were doing -- You were Danny Zuko?
-I was Danny Zuko, yeah.
Are you going to embarrass me and pull a clip up now?
-No, I would never embarrass you and pull a clip up.
That would be ridiculous.
I want to show everyone a clip. Here's Louis...
[ Women cheering ]
...as Danny Zuko in his school production of "Grease."
Take a look at this.
-I changed my plans.
[ Man coughs loudly ]
-[ Laughs ] That's good!
That's good. "That's cool. Let's go, you guys."
Come on. -Wow. Wow. Wow.
-That is fantastic. Hey.
Look at you now, man.
Look at you now. Come on. -Very different.
-"Walls." "Walls" is out right now as we speak.
Congrats on this.
This is your first solo album.
-Mm, yeah.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Thank you.
-How does it feel? How does it feel to have a --
-It's a relief to be here. I mean, as I said before,
it's been four years in the making.
And what I was I was used to with One Direction
was like an album a year, you know?
So I've had to be, like, patient and, like, sensible
and kind of, you know, understand the process.
I feel like I've learned a lot along the way.
But I think it took me a couple of years,
18 months, 2 years, to actually find my feet
and work out who I am. -Yeah.
-'Cause I had to do all that developing
kind of, you know, naturally 'cause I left One Direction.
We left One Direction, and then we're onto this.
So naturally, you know, there's a lot of eyes on it,
and I think I had to do my developing, you know,
in front of everyone else.
So there was a bit of treading water.
-Sure.
-But I feel like where I've landed on,
and especially with this single
that I'm going to perform tonight, "Walls,"
yeah, I'm really proud of it, really proud of it.
-Yeah, all your singles have been fantastic.
They've been streamed over a billion times.
[ Cheers and applause ]
A billion times. -Yeah.
-You're about to go on a world tour in March...
-Mm-hmm. -...for this record.
You're playing your hometown for the first time?
-Yeah, so, where I'm from, Doncaster, North of England --
I'm really excited, man.
Everywhere I go, Doncaster is me football team,
so I'm always saying how much I love Doncaster,
but I've never had the chance to play there.
The venue that I'm playing, I spent a lot of me youth there.
It's like -- It's like a leisure center.
You can go, like, swimming, ice skating there.
Do you know what I mean? Go to the gym if you want.
But I spent a lot of time there as a kid,
so it's going to be really special for me.
A lot of me friends, family going to be there.
I'm excited. -They must be so proud of you.
Dude, thank you so much for being here
and performing on our show. -Thank you, man.
Thanks for having me. -The album is out now. "Walls."
Louis Tomlinson!