James Corden Says He Felt ‘Deeply Unqualified’ to Host ‘The Late Late Show’
When James Corden took over The Late Late Show from Craig Ferguson in 2015, he feared that he didn’t have what it takes to be a top host in late-night comedy — and it only took him eight years to confirm it.
After Corden left CBS early last year, he returned to his roots back in his home country of England to the relief of his many American haters. Right now, Corden is in the middle of a run at the historic Old Vic theater in London in the political drama The Constituent, and on top of that, he and his Gavin & Stacey team are putting on one final Christmas special for the breakout British TV show that first put Corden on the international entertainment map.
With all that going on, Corden seemed to be content leaving America and American comedy well enough alone while he revisits what excited him as a stage performer and sitcom star/showrunner early in his career, but, hey, it’s hard to say no to Conan O’Brien.
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Corden appeared on a recent episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, the first clip of which has already been so disliked and so severely denigrated in the comment section that it’s currently the most negatively-received video on the Team Coco YouTube channel. In the snippet, Corden described how his first days as the host of The Late Late Show were “an entire out-of-body experience of feeling just unbelievably out-of-my-depth and deeply unqualified to do such a thing.”
Sounds like someone was reading his Twitter mentions.
“I read a quote from you once that I could relate to a lot,” Conan said to Corden. “You said, when you were picked for The Late Late Show, you thought, ‘Well, this is absurd, I’ve never stood on a monologue mark. I’ve never interviewed anyone, this shouldn’t be what’s happening.'” Conan, whose own ascension to late-night hosthood was also decidedly untraditional, having spent his entire entertainment career in TV writers’ rooms before landing the gig, related to Corden’s self-doubt about such a high-profile gig.
Conan continued of Corden, “There was this sense of, ‘Gee, I haven’t done any of the things that you’re supposed to have been doing to be a late-night host, but I thought I had other qualities that would (win) out in the end.’” Conan further posited of Corden’s career in American late night, “This really strict notion of what a late-night host had to be changed a lot.”
Corden admitted that, before starting The Late Late Show, he probably could have done a little more homework in preparation for the role, saying, “I just was not completely aware of the history of the form in a way.” Corden said of his groundwork. “I read all the books (about late night). … I was reading them, thinking, ‘This is nuts! You shouldn’t be reading any of this, it is so silly to be reading this!’”
Corden recalled how he was given only 11 weeks to put together the entire production of The Late Late Show, and in his little-watched inaugural season as host, he struggled to book high-profile celebrity guests while he had to grapple with the fact that the lead-in to The Late Late Show was five-year-old reruns of Hawaii Five-0. Throughout it all, Corden suffered a crisis of creative identity, telling Conan, “I would sit there, and I would think, ‘God, nobody knows what I could do, nobody knows what we could do, nobody knows what the show is.’”
“And then, you just have a moment when you go, ‘Oh, hang on! Wait, nobody knows what I could do, nobody knows what I’m capable of, and nobody knows what this show is! Oh wow, all the things that I thought were negatives just suddenly became positives!’” Corden said of the lightbulb moment that led him to turn The Late Late Show into a cutting-edge harbinger of the digital age’s transformation of traditional late night.
Today, American audiences (and New York waiters) know what Corden is capable of all too well — and Conan’s fans are having none of it. Wrote one of the top commenters under the video clip, “This week on 'Conan O’Brien Needs Better Friends.’”
