Paul Rudd will not let the youngsters of One Direction outshine him in the hallowed comedy halls of Saturday Night Live.

As the comedian kicked off his third stint as host of the NBC show, Rudd fought for the limelight with the X Factor quintet by forming his own group f singing sensations. The actor called on his fellow Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues costars to exercise their a cappella chops.

While Steve Carell, Will Farrell and Dave Koechner may not set tween's hearts aflutter, they did pull off a nice rendition of Afternoon Delight with a little support from their accented counterparts (see video below).

Rudd then took on the singers' legions of devoted fans. Sporting a 1D t-shit and spewing trivia about the boys' hairstyles, Rudd pushed his way past a ecstatic group of superfans to snag the autographs from the British-Irish performers (see video below).

In between holiday sketches and jokes about Obamacare, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson took the stage twice with songs from their most recent album, Midnight Memories.

Starting off with October's Story of My Life, One Direction went on to showed their more serious side with Through the Dark (see videos below).

Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC.