Zayn Malik Recalls Saving Harry Styles From a Pyrotechnic Mishap at a One Direction Concert

On the latest episode of Sean Evans’ Hot Ones Thursday (March 14), Zayn Malik recalled a time he encountered something even more fiery than the tear-inducing wings on the show: a pyrotechnical mishap at a One Direction concert many years ago, during which he saved bandmate Harry Styles from walking straight into special-effects flames.

“It’s actually amazing, ’cause it makes me look great,” the “Pillowtalk” singer joked of his superhero moment. “On stage, Harry was right next to a pyro, and the pyro was about to go off, because they were on timers. He had a towel over his head, and he had his head over the pyro and he didn’t see that the pyro was there.”

In footage from the 2013 incident, a concerned-looking Malik darts over to the “As It Was” musician — too busy wiping his face and hair with a towel to notice where he was going — and moves him away from the flames just in time. Meanwhile, Niall Horan and Liam Payne continue on with their business on stage, with only Louis Tomlinson appearing to notice what was happening to the side.

“You see me run from one side of the stage and push him out of the way,” Malik continued in between bites of spicy chicken. “And the pyro explodes in front of his face — that was really dangerous.”

The former boy bander also fondly reminisced about the group’s go-to song for when technical difficulties with the speaker system occurred at shows. “We’d just burst into ‘Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,’ a capella,” he told Evans, laughing. “Just do the whole performance of that until the microphones were working again.”

“That was the thing that we had in our back pocket always like, ‘If the microphone goes, we’ve always got that,'” he added. “As if it was some amazing performance. Funny times.”

The new interview comes just one day after Malik announced his fourth solo album, Room Under the Stairs, which will arrive May 17. The artist told Evans that the project features a “very different sound” compared to anything he’s preciously released, adding that it’s “really raw and honest.”

“I hope people get that when they listen to it,” he continued. “I hope they get some insight into how I’m feeling and the things I’ve been going through over the last six or seven years while I’ve been writing this record.”

“I recorded most of it in a tiny little shoe cabinet in my house,” Malik added. “I felt like it was fitting to name it after that room so people can get even more sentiment into what the whole idea behind it was.”

Watch Malik on Hot Ones above.