As Late-Night Shows Shut Down Due to Writers’ Strike, Tales of James Corden’s Union-Busting Are Going Viral

The writers are officially on strike. Jimmy Fallon is out of jokes.

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Following historic precedent, the first TV casualty of the WGA’s war on the gig economy of modern screenwriting has been late-night comedy shows. Shortly before contract negotiations between WGA and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers stuttered to a halt, Fallon expressed vague support for the writers who make his career possible at last night’s Met Gala, saying, “I’ll do whatever I can to support (the writers). … I need my writers. I need them real bad. I got no show without my writers.”

Seth Meyers, on the other hand, showed explicit solidarity with his writers, himself a veteran of the 2007-2008 writers’ strike and a TV writer by trade. Last night, Meyers delivered a somber closing note to his Late Night audience, telling them, “No one is entitled to a job in show business. But for those people who have a job in show business, they are entitled to fair compensation. They are entitled to make a living. I think it’s a very reasonable demand that is being set out by the guild, and I support those demands.”

However, as these late-night shows enter an indefinite hiatus, the most online attention is being paid to the host who just quit — James Corden was trending earlier today despite his departure from The Late Late Show last Thursday. Rumors of Corden’s decidedly anti-writer interactions with the Writer’s Guild have been circulating since at least 2019 when he was accused of attending a WGA meeting with his executive producers (and exactly none of his writing staff) only to advocate for lower pay for his own writers, and the story has re-entered the online discussion over writers’ rights. 

Now, Corden’s name is again being invoked as the worst possible example for how a human being should behave as Twitter users trash his possible past Pinkerton tendencies.