‘I Struggled With It’, Niall Horan Reveals The Downside To 1D Fame As A Teenager

 

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Niall Horan has revealed he felt trapped at times during the height of One Direction fame.

Due to mass hysteria and thousands of fans following the group wherever the went in the world, Niall, Harry, Liam, Louis and Zayn were put in a form of lockdown to ensure their safety, while travelling anywhere.

The lads would do their promo, shows or gigs and then return to the hotel where they’d remain for the rest of the day/night, but as they were teens, all they wanted to do was go out and explore.

Speaking to Dermot O’Leary on his podcast, ‘People, just people’, Niall said, “In the UK it was nuts. We’d go and doing signings and it was crazy. The first sign of it was the banging on car windows.”

“Around of the release of What Makes You Beautiful is when it really kicked off. We did a HMV run around the country Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, to do the signings and that was the first time I saw the madness,” he continued.

“Then we went to Italy, Germany France and Holland in four days. We had a different country each day just doing lengths of promo.

“I remember getting to Milan on the first day and being like, this is a different level. There was just thousands of people. It was the first time I had seen proper hysteria. Everyone there was so passionate. That was the first time I remember thinking, oh right, this is it now.”

When asked if he ever felt like a prisoner, Niall said, “A couple of times, yeah. We were 17,18,19 for the first few years. I struggled with it. I have to be doing something all the time and the thoughts of just closing the curtain in the hotel room was just madness to me.”

 

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He went on to say, “I really struggled to understand…[I was like] ‘Why won’t you just let us out? We just want to go for a walk!’ But you can’t get inside the brain of a fan. Now I completely get it, but at the time we were like, ‘You’re our age will you just let us out so we can walk down the street.’

“We went to all these amazing cities but not being able to see any of them, was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking but amazing at the same time.”

Recalling one particular incident, Niall said, “I think we were in Lima, Peru, we got in at like 1am and we were driving from the airport to the hotel. We saw a shopping centre and me, Louis and Liam said we’d go when we got up the next morning and have a little stroll.

“The next morning me and Louis were playing Fifa in the room and Liam came in and was like ok, lets go. Louis pulled the curtains and told us to have a look out the window. The police had done a headcount and there was 10,000 people on the street outside the hotel. We were like, ok, so that’s not happening!”

You can listen to the full podcast here

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