“That’s a very impressive mating dance, but you should
know I’m currently in a relationship.”sitcom “Gavin & Stacey,” but was prac-
tically unknown in America when he
took over the time slot from Craig Fer-
guson, in 2015; David Letterman called
him “that chubby guy.” His American
breakthrough occurred in the 2012
Broadway production of “One Man,
Two Guvnors,” an adaptation of Carlo
Goldoni’s commedia-dell’arte classic
“The Servant of Two Masters”—not a
typical path to Hollywood. Whereas
most late-night hosts are offspring of
“Saturday Night Live” (Fallon, Meyers,
Conan O’Brien) or “The Daily Show”
(Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John
Oliver, Hasan Minhaj), Corden is more
aligned with the English music hall,
and his comedic influences include such
British duos as Morecambe and Wise
and the Two Ronnies. Before deliver-
ing the opening monologues on “The
Late Late Show,” he had never per-
formed standup comedy.
But, in the past five years, Corden
has lodged himself in the American
pop-culture landscape, both on late-
night television and as a movie actor,
casting himself as a happy-go-lucky
showman who can liven up any party.
(Not incidentally, his bouncy enthusi-
asm is a trait that Brits tend to think
of as American.) The pop singer Harry
Styles, who has vacationed with Corden
in Jamaica and Mexico, told me, “He’s
one of those guys who just wants ev-
eryone to have a good time.” Winston,
who met Corden twenty years ago, on
the set of the British series “Teachers,”
recalled a cast-and-crew evening out
in Bristol, at “the most depressing pub
you could ever imagine.” It was kara-
oke night, and, without warning, Corden
got up and sang Robbie Williams’s “Let
Me Entertain You.” “The entire pub—
people who knew him, people who
didn’t know him, random locals, every
single person—was up on their tables
dancing, singing, joining in.”
People who dislike Corden find his
eagerness to entertain more like atten-
tion-hogging, his chumminess more
like smarm. He has a “please like me”
air that can grate, especially when it is
accompanied by song and dance—and
even more so when he is swathed in
digital fur, as in the recent film version
of “Cats.” “I don’t think I think that
much about being liked,” he told me in
November, when I visited the Los An-
geles set of “The Late Late Show,”
though, he acknowledged, “sometimes
I can look like a golden retriever.” He
was sitting in his office, beneath a framed
letter from Michelle Obama (“Thanks
for the best car ride I’ve had in years”),
wearing a Gucci tiger sweater and a
thin beard, to minimize his jowls. A
votive candle burned on his desk, in-
congruous in the California sunlight.
“I’m a big candle man,” he explained.(Also, Nest Fragrances supplies candles
for the show’s guests, and they arrive
by the boxload.)
I confessed to Corden that I had
teared up when I watched the Liver-
pool edition of “Carpool Karaoke.” He
said that on the morning of the shoot,
before setting off, McCartney had told
him that he didn’t want to go inside
his old house. “He said, ‘I haven’t been
there since I left, when I was twenty.
I just feel weird about it,’” Corden re-
called. “I went, ‘Paul, your only job
today is to have a great time. So, if
there is anything that makes you feel
uncomfortable, we’re not going to do
it.’” But he urged McCartney not to
rule it out. They agreed that, when they
pulled up to 20 Forthlin Road, McCart-
ney would give him a look if he wanted
to leave.
“When we pulled up outside, I
thought, Oh, man, I wish we’d devised
a code word instead, because what if
he’s giving me the look?” They sat in the
car, locking eyes. Finally, Corden asked,
“Should we go in?” “Yeah,” McCartney
said. “Let’s do it.”T
he next morning, I met Corden at
a dance studio on the Paramount
lot. He was learning choreography for
“The Prom,” a forthcoming Netflix
movie directed by Ryan Murphy, based
on the 2018 Broadway musical. Corden
and Meryl Streep play clueless Broad-
way actors who try to boost their lik-
ability by descending on a conservative
Indiana town to take up the cause of
an ostracized lesbian teen. “They’re ab-
solute narcissists,” Corden said, of his
and Streep’s characters. “They think the
world is Broadway. They think they are
the world.”
He and a group of dancers rehearsed
“The Acceptance Song,” a “We Are
the World”-esque anthem that the lim-
ousine-liberal thespians perform after
interrupting a monster-truck rally. Mid-
way through, Corden’s character, a one-
time Drama Desk Award winner named
Barry Glickman, makes a buffoonish
grand entrance. One of the dancers,
who had been standing in for Corden
in previous rehearsals, suggested that
he do “a little swirl or something,” à la
“West Side Story.” But Corden wasn’t
sold—he wanted room to improvise
on the day of the shoot. “My worry is