How CBS’ ‘Happy Together’ And Harry Styles Are Connected

If you weren’t already set to tune into the series premiere of CBS’ “Happy Together” tonight, perhaps this little tidbit will persuade you: One Direction alum Harry Styles helped inspire the show.

That’s right, the former boy bander made his feature film debut in last year’s “Dunkirk,” and now he’s making his debut as an executive producer with “Happy Together.” This isn’t some random project he decided to hop on, though. He’s an executive producer on the CBS sitcom because it’s loosely inspired by his life.

The show centers on a famous pop star, Cooper James (Felix Mallard), who wants a little bit of normalcy in his life and decides to move in with his accountant, Jake (Damon Wayans, Jr.), and his wife, Claire (Amber Stevens West). The 30-something married couple is happy to add a little bit of excitement into their average lives, while Cooper is glad to be around stable and caring people. So, what does that have to do with Styles? It turns out, he once did the same thing.

“A few years ago, maybe seven or eight years ago, I was making a film with One Direction, directing a few of their music videos,” Ben Winston, who’s also an executive producer on the series, said during the Summer 2018 TCA press tour, according to E! News. “I had just moved into my very modest, quiet house in London, in the most suburban area of London you could possibly imagine, and a young man who I was working with at the time with the name of Harry Styles, who is one of the EPs on this show, asked me if he could live in our attic for what would only be a couple of weeks.”

He continued: “I went home and I said to my wife, Meredith, ‘It’s a bit of an odd request. Harry, this guy from the band, would like to stay in our attic for a couple weeks. How would you feel about that?’ She said, ‘As long as it’s only for two weeks, I’m fine with it.’ Eighteen months later, Harry moved out of our attic, and nobody ever knew that he was living there. It was the most, like I said, suburban, quiet street you could ever imagine. And the fact is, no one ever knew.”

Now, not only are people well aware of it, but they’re going to see a version of this time in Styles’ life depicted on TV. Fans would be wise to remember that although this is based off a real-life situation, it’s very much fiction.

“Unfortunately, our lives really were very boring,” Winston said. “[Styles] would come in. He’d go to sleep. We would do a few chores, and there wouldn’t be anything very funny about it. So when we say [the show] is ‘loosely inspired by,’ that’s because if we actually put what happened on the television, it wouldn’t be that exciting.”

With the show being even slightly based on Styles’ life and having a cast that includes Wayans, Stevens West and relative newcomer Mallard, Winston, and fans, won’t have to worry about the show being exciting. Viewers will remember Wayans from his time as Coach on “New Girl” and Brad on “Happy Endings,” just like they’ll recognize Stevens West from “Greek,” “The Carmichael Show” and “Ghosted.”

As for Mallard, who stars as the Styles-esque character, his only previous acting credits are from the Australian soap opera, “Neighbours,” where he starred as Ben Kirk for over 500 episodes, and its spin-offs and mini-series. This will be his first role in the United States.

See what Styles helped inspire when “Happy Together” premieres on CBS tonight at 8:30 p.m. EDT.