They’re to be recorded in this cavern-
ous studio in Westminster and later
beamed back for delayed broad-
cast in the US. Corden is poised,
just now, to take part in a live link
with a CBS morning show. Any moment, the
hosts there will bring him in for some brisk
transatlantic banter about the coming shows.
Corden hosts around 160 episodes of The
Late Late Show a year. This is routine to him.
Live links and other shill work to promote a
coming episode’s attractions, then the audience
potter in and the band play and it’s go time.
He’ll interlink his fingers and deliver a charm-
ing monologue. He’ll make newsy jokes at his
desk. Guests will appear, to laugh and muse,
then go. Maybe there’s a musical skit. Maybe
Corden interacts with his audience or tees up
one of The Late Late Show’s popular pretaped
bits. Outro. Applause. Tomorrow they go again.
Corden and his core team of producers, pre-
dominantly British, first got this gig about 650
episodes ago and they never imagined it would
run this long.
Corden is 40 now, comfortable in his skin,
his beard and quiff neatly manicured. He
tends to dress in dark-and-serious blue or
black with a splash of something silly. Today’s
navy blazer is spotted with white polka dots
the size of five pence pieces. He fiddles with
his buttons, waiting to be introduced. The CBS
morning hosts are picking their way through
the nightmare that is the daily American
news cycle: “Mom’s kidnapped daughter”,
“Firefighters’ health scare”, “Prince Harry’s
first Father’s Day”. Corden has to stay alert
in case they throw to him suddenly, expect-
ing apt comment.
Honestly, you wouldn’t bet against him.
Corden has a flair for uprooting the right con-
versational nugget – for establishing, in a hot
hurry after the first handshake or cheek peck,
an easy intimacy. Over the coming week in his
company, shadowing Corden on his return to
London, I’ll watch it happen repeatedly: a
little parcel of intense, geeky sports-stadium
chat with the musician Marcus Mumford; abrisk five on the West End theatre scene with
Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark; European politics
with Tom Watson; European holiday destina-
tions with Tom Hanks.
Finally Corden is asked, on air, who he has
on the show this week. Deep breath. Tom
Hanks, Harry Styles, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica
Chastain (flogging an X-Men film) and Melissa
McCarthy (not flogging anything, joining in on
The Late Late Show for a giggle), a Sherlock-
Gandalf-Thor trifecta of Cumberbatch,
McKellen and Hemsworth. Anyone else? “It’s
the strangest thing,” Corden says. “The former
first lady Michelle Obama got in touch...”
When he’s done at the desk he removes
his earpiece and wanders over to a crowd
of milling studio crew. He trades relation-
ship advice with one (“Did you decide to go
on holiday with him?”) and food tips with
another (“Have you tried vegan carbonara?”).
Phone out, he swipes me through some pics of
a recent hang with Tom Cruise. Film star and
talk show host went two-up in a fighter plane,
Cruise in the Maverick seat and Corden, quite
naturally, riding Goose. They had a decent
chinwag up there, Corden says, whenever
loop-the-loops allowed.
He’s hungry for chat, or anyway has terrific
stamina for it. The expression on the face of
his make-up man is a picture any time Corden
gets in the chair and then waves someone
over to shoot the breeze while he’s meant to
be sitting still. Corden never seems to empty
his conversational stocks nor turn to the next
waiting face only to draw a blank. At least, he
doesn’t till tonight’s show.
They’re ready to shoot. The audience are
brought in and seated; the band vamps. A
flown-over stylist (Hanks’) munches import
Cheetos in the corridor. Runners pelt around
with lint rollers. Corden stands by his desk,
tapping a beat on the polished maple. “OK,”
mumbles a producer, radioing to explain the
delay, “we’re just waiting for Mr Hanks to
change his trousers.” Corden looks at the audi-
ence, which has another few minutes to wait.
“Any questions?” he asks. “Go on.”Somebody squeals, “Gavin & Stacey!”, a
topical call because Corden has recently con-
firmed that the sitcom he cocreated with Ruth
Jones will return for a Christmas reunion
episode. “You can’t just shout Gavin & Stacey
at me,” Corden tells the crowd. “That’s not a
question. That’s a statement. That’s something
people used to yell at me out of the window
of cars. C’mon, what else?”
High in one of the balcony seats a woman
stands up and shouts, “Can you remember my
name?” She’s about the same age as Corden,
same Bucks flavour to her voice. They went
to school together. Primary and secondary.
They kissed once. “So what’s my name?”
she shouts.
Oh, God. Corden steps back on his heel,
frozen. You can almost see him scrolling back-
wards through all the faces, all the chats; past
the Toms, Hanks and Cruise, then every other
A-calibre guests they’ve had on the show;
the Bs, the Cs; back through dozens of musi-
cians who’ve agreed to climb in a car with
Corden and belt out a song for The Late Late
Show’s brilliant “Carpool Karaoke” segments;
back through his five-star run on Broadway
with One Man, Two Guvnors; stints as a gun-
for-hire presenter on award shows; the hit
years on Gavin & Stacey; miss years on a string
of British TV calamities; all the way to his
childhood with Malcolm and Margaret Corden
in High Wycombe.
Corden, playing for time, says, “It’s hard to
see you at this distance.” The production crew
hear this and right away her face is shown
on the studio big screen. Thanks guys. “OK.
OK. I’m gonna go with...” He closes his eyes.
“Laura?” She raises her arms. The audience
cheer. Corden’s band strike up in celebration:
the boss hasn’t lost his touch after all. On stage
he wipes his forehead.
“How’s your life?” Corden asks her, a bit
breathless. “It’s all right,” she shouts back.
“How’s yours?” He looks around. He has a
monologue to do in a minute. A sit-down
with Tom Hanks. He has to introduce a pre-
taped segment in which Michelle Obama plays
a furious game of dodgeball against Harry
Styles. He needs to get through tonight and
do it all again tomorrow.How’s your life, James Corden?
It’s Tuesday, the morning
after the first London show,
and we’re driving through
city traffic. Corden has some
time to answer properly. “Now? I’m a father.
Married. I live in Los Angeles. I feel I have
some really great and true friends... You
look around and think, ‘I’ve managed to con
people into thinking I know how to do this.’
Life, give or take, is panning out the way I
hoped it would.” >>Suited and lightly oranged, James Corden sitsat a desk in a London studio. He frowns and lickshis teeth, listening to a hidden earpiece – readyto be cued from across the sea. Middlesex-born,Bucks-raised, a Londoner throughout his twentiesand early thirties, Corden has spent the lastfew years in Los Angeles from where he hostsThe Late Late Show for CBS. This week, a specialoccasion, he’s brought the talk show to the UKfor a run of four episodes.09-19FeatureJamesCorden.indd 140 10/07/2019 15:37
136 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2019