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stories visit GQ.co.uk /magazine>> surprisingly often, following Corden
about, that he’ll strike a valedictory note
when talking about the show. Live on the
radio with Chris Evans he mused about his
children getting older. Did they want to
grow up in America? He recently signed on
to act in a Netflix musical opposite Meryl
Streep, because he “misses the camaraderie
of being among actors”. He has a script for
an HBO-ish drama in a drawer. The end of his
chat show run is likely closer than its begin-
ning. “There is a feeling we won’t be there
forever,” Corden says. “What I can’t do is get
used to the money.”
I tell him: you sometimes sound like you’re
trying to talk yourself out of the job. Corden
is tired, almost vertical on a sofa in his
dressing room. He answers obliquely, men-
tioning the playwright Jez Butterworth, a
firework-like figure in the British theatre
scene, who has given Corden advice in the
past. “Jez sometimes tells me,
‘Don’t forget you’re a punk. You
don’t look like a punk. But it was
a punk move to take on this show.
Let your next move be a punk
move too.’”
Corden wonders what that
punk move might be. Something
on a smaller scale, perhaps.
“Something that makes people
go ‘Whaaaat?’” He can’t bear
the idea of hanging on too long,
becoming the Arsène Wenger of
late-night broadcasting. “But then
the day might come and I might
not be brave enough. I’ve got to
try to make peace with this idea
that if I walk away from this
show, there’s a chance I become a
question on Jeopardy. One people
struggle to answer.”
There’s significance in the timing of his
decision, with Ruth Jones, to revive Gavin
& Stacey. Jones has a bestselling novel out.
Corden’s got the show. “We would’ve hated
for Gavin & Stacey to be seen as something
we’re reviving in a panic, over no longer
being relevant.” By bringing back the show
now, when they have other going concerns,
“We’re hoping it won’t be seen as this career-
emergency, break-the-glass decision.”
They first started pondering the idea of
a revival years ago, Corden says, initially
holding off out of fear of spoiling something
that had turned golden in the collective
cultural memory. Then they thought: life’s
too short not to. “We wrote the new script
over Facetime,” Corden recalls. “I would
get up at 4am and work with Ruth till it
was time to take Max to school... We didn’t
tell anyone we were doing it, certainly not
the BBC. We thought, ‘We’ll do it for usand we’ll know if it’s right.’ We’ve seen too
many people ruin what they’ve done – for
no reason.”
A first full-cast rehearsal of Gavin & Stacey
is scheduled for the coming Monday. Corden
shivers. “I’m as scared about Monday as I’ve
felt in ages,” he says.
I remind him that, about ten days ago, he
was doing loop-the-loops in an aeroplane
piloted by Tom Cruise. “That was apprehen-
sion,” Corden says. “This is fear.”Loose, visibly relieved – even
his back looks happy – Corden
climbs a staircase to the top
floor of a London restaurant and
sits down. A week has passed.
It’s 30C weather outside and he removes
a smart, if rashly chosen, cardigan. He’s
twinkly and quippy about the cardigan,
about the architecture of the restaurant (“Sobaroque!”), about my dereliction as a jour-
nalist in being slow to follow him on Twitter.
“I had to follow you first. I really made all
the running there.”
The Gavin & Stacey rehearsal went well
then, I say.
“It was lovely. It was great. You’re revis-
iting a thing in you that’s been dormant
for a long time. But it felt... right.” He can’t
say more: wait till Christmas. So we eat,
go for a couple of cocktails, talk about
his coming holiday, the two weeks spent
abroad with the family before Corden
comes back to shoot the new Gavin & Stacey
proper. That shoot will end in mid-summer,
then he’ll climb on a weekend flight, back
to The Late Late Show studio in Los Angeles
and the first of next season’s 160 episodes.
But the holiday is all he’s willing to think
about right now. “You need to carve out
moments of silence so that you’re still open
to the noise.”As is often the way with Corden, an initial
burst of sledgey, firecracker banter yields,
through a conversation’s course, to some-
thing gentler and more reflective. He spent
the weekend with the larger Corden clan.
Malcolm and Margaret, siblings and cousins,
everyone round for Sunday lunches and
sleepovers. It’s been both lovely and hard,
he says, re-embedding. It’s made him realise
all over again how far away here is from
there. “My wife and I talk about it all the
time. Every day we live in America and we
don’t get the 4pm phone call from home –
‘Something’s happened’ – that feels like a
good day.”
In the wings at one of The Late Late
Show tapings I’d spoken to Malcolm Corden,
who told me that even when your son is
40 you don’t stop worrying about them. It
may be that the son needs to be 40 before
they start to worry back. “Something’s been
playing on my mind,” Corden
says, at lunch, “You told me the
other day: it sounds like you’re
trying to talk yourself out of
doing the show. And it must
sound like that. My reason for
talking that way – it’s not just
career ambitions, it’s that there
are people here, in England, and
they’re getting older. I want to
have time with them, once this
adventure in America is over.
That’s on my mind, a lot. Because
it’s a long way away. And those
phone calls – ‘Something’s hap-
pened’ – they’re coming. None
of us thought, when we started,
we’d be gone so long.”
A stranger comes over to the
table, to interrupt. “Excuse me,
James, you don’t know me but...” Corden
spins, Cranston-eager, to engage the man.
They chat. They take a photo. Another
stranger is encouraged by the sight and
approaches too. Then another. And another.
“Sorry, James, I’d kick myself if I didn’t.”
Only by the seventh interruption does the
strain start to show. Corden widens his eyes
at me. He’s trying. GCorden with Michael Sheen before the actor takes to the couch alongside
Paul Giamatti for the last Late Late Show recorded in London, 20 June09-19FeatureJamesCorden.indd 148 11/07/2019 13:38
144 GQ.CO.UK SEPTEMBER 2019