James Corden

0:02Hello, my name is James Corden. and I feel delighted about being Conan O 'Brien's friend.

0:34My wife, Liza. Yeah. Lover. I say that. It's a contractual thing. Oh. But she's very into like taking care of herself, being healthy. And she sent me to work with this person. She said, I think this person would be good for you. Teach you some like good stretches and movements and things like that. Because she's always doing her best to see if she can keep me alive just a little longer. But this woman was telling me, oh, try this deep breathing and exhaling. I said, okay. And she said, when you exhale, make a lot of noise. Because that's, have you ever heard that before? First of all, welcome to Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend.

1:11Oh, I didn't realize we were doing... Just before we started recording, you said, so this is an intro. Oh, sorry. We're good. Keep going. No. No, I want to hear this. I really want to hear, what do you... I want to hear this. Because I need to... But I'll introduce you guys first, and then we can get... They know who we are. You just keep rolling. Man, we're fast and loose here. Hey, wow, this is so loose. Uh-huh. Okay, I'm feeling a little bit of shame, because you did say this is an intro, and then I just started babbling without formally introducing you. In your defense, we're doing a bunch of different things right now.

1:43Oh, no, we only do one at a time once a week. We don't do a bunch of things in a row, jam them all together, and then leave for the Maldives for like six months. I can't wait, you guys. On our golden helicopter. Oh, I'm already packed. No, but she was teaching me that, you know, you breathe in and then you breathe out and you go,

2:07and that's supposed to be good for you. Has anyone heard this before, that it's supposed to be good to make sound because it causes vibrations and... Let's all try. No! No!

2:23Anyway, I was doing it. I lay on the floor and I was doing it and it just sounded like I was an impatient asshole. What do you mean? because that was just, you know, people were, my kids are around and I'm in the corner going, and then I would notice that, you know, like my daughter would say something like, oh, and I, you know, I went to this music festival and I really thought the artists were really great.

2:52And, you know, people were like, hey, what's your problem? I just sounded like the biggest drag in the world. Did you feel a difference? I can kind of see what this woman was talking about, that it does make the exhale a little more powerful. And I could see how it really gets all the carbon dioxide out. I could see a lot of reasoning behind it. I think she's on to something, and I bet you that it's a real popular thought out there. But more what I realized is you've got to find a place where no one else is around. Because people are having conversations, and whatever they're saying, if you're on the floor behind a couch and they can't even see you and they say things like, you know, I just want you to know, son, I really love you.

3:40But it's going to be even more weird if you hear it coming from a distant room. Yeah. I know.

3:48You know, well, I think we've made a lot of advance. I mean, we still have a long way to go, but we have made some good advances in civil rights.

3:57what is your fucking problem well I'm really glad you know women didn't use have the right to vote and it's good I mean think about it you know we have come

4:13oh what but that's what it sounds like oh yeah that's not something I believe I was gonna say I used to walk on my mom's back and she would exhale like that when I was doing it I thought I was hurting her because to just like massage her and stuff. Did no one else walk on their parents' back? Was that just me? Well, I think I would have killed my mother if I walked on her back. Okay. You know? I wasn't like a grown adult. I was, you know, a kid. And she'd just be like, can you walk on my back? And I'd, okay, that's all right. That's all right. No one else. That's fine. I don't think it's that odd.

4:45I just, I didn't do it to my parents. No, but the sounds that she would make were like those guttural sounds. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. I didn't. Well, yeah, I think we're all so inhibited. And when I say all of us, I mean just me. But it's a good idea to, it's just that I, it does sound like you're editorializing. When theater school, we used to have to do that stupid thing where you'd go. Theater school? Yeah, I went to. What's theater school? Motherfuckers, I have a master of fine arts in theater. We're all shocked. Who says motherfuckers, I have a master's in fine arts and theater? This motherfucker.

5:20Wait a minute, the first part of the sentences was like, I've got a clock and I'm going to put a cap in your ass. But then it went to, I've got a master's in fine arts and theater. Hey, motherfucker! I've got a master's in fine arts and theater. Because there's no other way to say it without absolute shame and embarrassment. Why? That's a nice, that's good. It'd be funny to switch it and say like, well, I'd like you to know I think I'm very qualified to put on Chekhov's production of The Siegel because I've got a motherfucking clock! Switch it around. Well, we used to have to do this horrible thing where you try to release your jaw and you go.

5:58I hated it. Wait, what? I don't even wanna know what that is. That's like to loosen it. You're supposed to loosen your jaw and like get it as relaxed as possible. I could never do it. Do it again. No, that's how you trick someone into looking like they're giving a blow job. I love that they gave you a theater exercise which is take your two hands like this, and then go. And you're like, this is a theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep doing it. This is a guy in a back of a band. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. Do it again. Do it, do it again.

6:33That's good. That's really good. Oh no. Yeah. Now just say, work the shaft. Wait, what? You know. It's a line from Chekhov. It's a line from the cherry orchard where they have to work the shaft. Oh my God, I'm just realizing everything's flashing back on me. Yeah, tell me about some of these other exercises at theater school. Well, sometimes we'd have to just straight up give a blowjob. Well, that's different. Is your MFA on like notebook paper and it's in Sharpie? I went to theater school. Where was it? It was in that warehouse. My diploma's on a napkin that you can only read under blacklight.

7:12Yeah.

7:16I can't believe you did that and never thought. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Oh, maybe it was down here. I don't know. It still does. You can do it down there. Hey, Sona, stop it. I'm seeing if it works, if it actually loosens your jaw. Maybe we should do more warm-ups before we record. I love that there's now video footage of all three of us doing, you specifically, a profile. I don't care. You know, hey, hey, we get the clicks. I don't care how we get the clicks. You think I care how we get the clicks? Hey, America, you want some...

7:52Click away, America. It's a meme. It's a new meme. It's a new meme. Yeah, you don't think we can turn that into something? My kid's got to eat.

8:05You know, can I tell you what? This reminds me of an idea. I'm crying. I swear to God. From the memories. This was an idea we had on the late night show and we really wanted to do it and we just never did it. But we wanted to make a fake ad for like late night and we wanted it to me be, figure out a pose where I've got like my mouth open and my hands like this. And we're saying like, you know, Conan gobbles up the competition in late night and put it all over New York, right? And make it perfect so that you can't not draw a dick. and wait two days and then go around and shoot all of the, you know, we thought that would be like the funniest thing to do and then we just never did it.

8:50It's not too late. Well, this is going to top that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just, you know, whatever. Go for it. What do I care? My life is pretty much over. We're both on the other side of things. Just go to town. All right. My guest today hosted the Late Late Show on CBS for eight years. Now he has a new Sirius XM series called This Life of Mine, available on channel 109 and on the Sirius XM app.

9:21Very excited he's here today. James Corden, welcome.

9:27Very nice to have you here. There is so much to talk about because you and I share certain experiences that I can't talk to a lot of people about this, meaning It's weird, isn't it? Yeah, I know what you mean. Yes. We've both murdered without conscience, and we've never been caught. Matt, I think the term is manslaughter. I don't think, to be clear. Can I just say yours was manslaughter. Yours was actually... Mine was I thought about it for a long time. There's no grounds for manslaughter. It was murder. Straight up. Straight out. I thought about it. I got the tub. I got the various chemicals.

10:04Oh, God. Wow, this is really taking the ticket. Now I am wary about being Cody and Brian Stratton. You should be wary. You should be wary. No, we have a lot in common. And then, you know, I thought I'd start with the obvious one, which is we've both hosted late night shows. I read a quote from you once that I could relate to a lot, which is you said when you were picked for the Late Late Show that 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. 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 out in the end yeah and then it turns out that this very strict notion that we have here I mean these are really an American invention these shows I think this really strict notion of what a late night host had to be changed a lot.

11:00Yes. I mean, I think when I think about back when I started in amongst an entire out-of-body experience of feeling just unbelievably out of my depth and deeply unqualified to do such a thing, I think I just was not completely aware of the history of the form in a way. I read when I got the job, I read all the books, which, you know, you're very, very much written about in lots of the Bill Carter books and things like that. And I read them all and I was like reading them thinking, this is nuts. You shouldn't be reading any of this. This is so silly to be reading this. It is so foolish to be reading books about basically when you host one of these shows, you're going in to be yourself and create an environment where you're happy and you're doing your thing.

11:49So the idea that you'd be studying for it, you can't bone up on any of this. There's have to do it and then increasingly find the things that you love to do do those keep doubling down on that and you did that when it was fantastically successful well that's it i really remember quite vividly a sort of light bulb moment where we only had uh i think we had 11 weeks to put our show together build a set get a team together writers all these things segment producers and and all this stuff so there was really not a lot of time to think about it to sort of existentially and then you know we couldn't really book any guests on the show because all publicists were just going well understandably we're going well we're going to wait and see see what the show's like and then we'll book them and we would be like i don't know that we have that time because we were we were going to follow letterman's last i think two months maybe seven weeks and then we were following like repeats of hawaii 50 through the summer and then where we actually it's my dream to follow a repeat of hawaii 50 it's actually one of my funniest things we used to do where we'd follow like hawaii 50 or or shows of that ilk and so we'd start episodes through the summer with a mock episode of talking hawaii 50 and we would just discuss what happened in that episode and then sometimes because the episode would be from like five years ago and we'd managed to get we'd find the guy who played like the guy at the newsstand that's fantastic and we'd be like how what you know certainly we knew we had this little bit of time and i was just sitting thinking god and it's a strange thing about how you can sort of change your your your just your attitude really to how something's going where i would sit and i think god nobody nobody knows what we could do no one knows what this show is and then you just have a moment when you go oh hang on wait nobody knows what i can 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 are positive just suddenly became positive so it's like well it doesn't matter then boggles my mind how people manage to wherever you place someone in the world or whatever situation you place them in if they're meant to do something i have this theory that like a salmon swimming upstream they will figure that out you have a moment when you're a kid where you very much realize because then you have two sisters that's right yeah and your sisters are very funny charismatic oh i'm the quietest you're the quiet one entire family but what's your one can ever believe that what's your moment when you you you're looking at do you go to the theater where do you go where do you see it is it television or theater where do you look and say that what is because i've i remember my moments when i'd say what is that i want to be doing that well it's it's less so about seeing something what a real big memory of mine is i can remember that i was four years old and my we used to we were a salvation army family so we used to go to church of the Salvation Army, which is a thing in of itself, which we'll unpack another day.

14:48I have to be honest with you, I don't know what a Salvation Army family is. The Salvation Army is kind of different in America than it is in the UK, where basically, and when you, like any church that you're born into, you think it's completely normal that on a Sunday, your parents put on a uniform and you go down to church and then you march through the town uh while your mom sings in the choir and your dad you know is playing in the band and this is just completely normal but yeah we're walking through the town this is what everybody does and it's the uniform that we know here in the u.s correct salvation uniform it kind of looks like a military yeah it looks like a police it looks like a police uniform and your parents are wearing it and your mom's got a bonnet on and then you'll go to the morning service you'll rush home eat a roast dinner which is essentially what you americans do on thanksgiving you'd eat that every sunday until you can't breathe and then you'll go back at night and do it again and there's a brass band and all this stuff it's absolutely absurd but when you're like eight is four, five, six, seven, up until I was like 13, 14.

16:02I was like, huh. So when you say weekend, you mean you're not playing like soccer or any of these things? Nothing. Zero. Well, I love the assumption that you think everyone else is. Well, it's the weekend. So I guess your father is going to dress up completely like a corporal and bang on a drum. And sing onward Christian soldiers as you walk through the town. Yeah. We're all doing that, right guys it's funny i grew up i grew up very catholic and uh i just remember thinking well this is what people do we go to church these magic tricks are performed where the a cookie is turned into the body and blood of christ and there's there's incense and uh chimes are ringing and uh and i i i just assumed that this is what everybody does and then you realize oh no yes There are.

16:53There's a large number of Catholics. But no, not everybody's watching this Las Vegas act every weekend. Correct. That's it. But I don't say that with disrespect. I have the greatest respect for Las Vegas. And Siegfried and Roy were your pastors, right? Yes, they were. Until, unfortunately, well, you know what happened. So I'm four years old. So you're doing that. So I'm four years old. My sister's being christened, which is the equivalent of sort of being, you know, yeah, christened. you call her christened right in other churches so she's being christened and our family is on the the platform which kind of any other state parlance would be a stage and the salvation army officer who the vicar or the priest would said uh oh you know james you can't really see let's grab him a chair and he got me a chair and i stood on this chair and then suddenly i could see the congregation of this church, which was probably 17 people.

17:48In my head, it was a thousand. And I looked out, and then I just sort of started pulling like a face and gets a little giggle and then do something else. And then I still remember turning around and looking under my legs, and they're all cracking up laughing. And I can remember, well, the weirdest thing is I remember they're feeling amazing. And then going back to join the congregation and sitting between my elder sister and my mom and you know i'm back in the sort of the rows of the church and there's someone's back in front of me and i remember thinking well this is boring compared to being up there up there is better up there good down here and from then on just became a quest to be like up there and that was it like i really really remember that and then and then we would go to the theater all the time when i was sort of turned 11 i we didn't have we weren't we didn't have much money really and but so i would i never used to get like birthday presents or christmas presents i would just get theater tickets and we'd go and see you know starlight express or or les miserables or the phantom of the or you know any of the big running musicals and i just remember sitting there just thinking well this is the most extraordinary feeling i'm in a room with 2 000 people this is just magic this is amazing how how can i be a part of this somehow in any way shape or form this just feels completely right in every way you know you know it's interesting because you have this trajectory in the uk i think when you started your show here in the states you had had success on on on broadway but your your big breakout moment was unknown to a lot of us like i didn't know really about Gavin and Stacey.

19:35Yeah. And this is a show that you created with a friend of yours. Me and my friend Ruth wrote it, yeah. And you write this, and it's 2007, I think it's 2010. It's the sitcom that really launched your career. And what always interests me is the impetus, the old term for it is moxie, like they would say in the 1930s. That kid's got moxie. But to create your own show and sort of launch your own career that way is pretty amazing. You made that happen. Well, it really came out of a kind of moment of frustration in a way because I was in a play called The History Boys, which really, when it opened, became the play to see.

20:19It was the play in London, then we did a world tour. We shot a movie of it, and then we went to Broadway, and it kind of swept the ball at the Tonys and all these things. And in this play were eight boys, all of a similar age, all in a pretty similar stage in our careers. And I'd been lucky that I'd done a couple of like films and I'd done a TV series that my friend Ruth was in, Ruth Jones, who is just a magnificent actress and writer. And we were doing the play. And then when we got to New York, the play was such a smash that all these boys were like, just like my buddy Dominic, who's like, you know, I used to live with, introduced me to my wife, was just coming in every day with like five movie scripts and he was like god i'm gonna read all these before i meet martin scorsese at 6 p.m over the road you know it was all this like you know sam barnett was like uh i've just been to a restaurant with steven spielberg right you know it was all like this and i remember one day there was a a script and it was a hard script and it was so amazing about these two two young british guys who aged sort of late teens early 20s who were going traveling around the world and then they got accused of a murder and this was like it was this was this was the thing it's going to be huge and me and my friend andy and russell were all being sent the script this was actually when we're at the national theater before we got to new york and we go down to pick up these scripts and i'll never forget it that they both had the entire script and i just had two pages which was the guy who worked on a newsstand who sold them something on their way to the airport and i was like fuck and it was like really because i'm fat right and you're like oh man i didn't i never thought about that i was genuinely like i hadn't even considered that like right i just the way i looked was gonna really felt like you didn't fit into a certain mold that people were going well we think you're good but you know you'll drop off a tv to hugh grant in a rom-com hey many of us got our start that way and you'll work your way you'll work your way up and then maybe when you're in your early 50s you'll play like a sort of bubbly judge in something you know and and i remember being like oh i i hadn't i hadn't even i hadn't even thought about i was like oh i just figured this was gonna be what i do so then it was like oh okay and i was discussing this with with my friend ruth and i'd been to a wedding in in a place in wales called barry island which ruth knew very well she's from wales and i just told her i've been at this wedding and i was like i had this idea for a story and she said ah i think we should try and write that and it was really her perseverance of going james i really think we should write this and we submitted it to the bbc and then to nobody is more surprised than ruth and i that the show launched on a small digital channel called bbc3 and it had i think like 420 000 viewers which was a respectable number for that channel and then by the time the last episode that we that we put out was at the time the most watched scripted show of the decade in britain i think it had like 18 million viewers i think and then it was just kind of an a crazy time of where it just was amazing

23:41i went to audition for a film and i'd been i knew this is must be 20 years ago now if not more and definitely more actually because i remember i was about to turn 21 and i'd got the they'd sent these sides of the character and i forget who the character was and i went in and i read this read the scene and the director goes that was that was great change that was really good i promise you these were his actual words he went seeing you now and meeting you in person we think there's another part that you're perfect for can we give you the script and you go outside take as long as you need and look at these scenes and come back in and really if you want to come back later in the day or to take half an hour whatever you need but we seeing you now in person we really feel that this is great i was like okay we we we just can't find this guy and just so you know we really think it could be it and i'm like this is how hollywood this is how hollywood this is like a train that's coming to kill us i know it's coming there's nothing we can do i open the thing and i forget the character's name but i remember it said mid-20s repulsive

24:48and he said he said he has acne on his face acne on his face hair is growing like his hair is his scalp is uh like his scalp has flaky skin all this stuff and i literally i remember really going okay and then and now i think well why wouldn't you just go hey guys i'm now i'm good but at the time you're just like i just need a job i want to work so you're like yeah so go back in and they're like what do you think i was like i love it but the idea that someone would say now seeing you in the flesh rather than this black and white headshot photo now that i see you

25:34repulsive you look at the script enter shithead yeah it's definitely right the great thing about this arc is you decide I'm going to take matters into my own hands. And then you have other massive success on Broadway. But then you come to the Late Late Show. There are a lot of successful segments, but the carpool karaoke just blows up. It's not often that I see someone else do something where I think, oh man, I wish that had been me. But when you spent the day, because I ran into you once and asked you about it, I'm such a Beatles fanatic. And when you spent the day with McCartney, I was just like, damn it, why couldn't I have just been in the back seat listening you know like why couldn't i have been there because that that was just a dream come true it was extraordinary you know i don't know if you're like this but i'm really aware of what a great time i'm having it's only retrospectively i look back and go oh yeah that was fun at the time i don't you know you're just in it you're in it you're doing it yeah but doing that day you know i i just knew that we were doing something that was incredibly special i and i knew i think i knew before i even watched the edit that it was like okay well this is the pinnacle of this bit it's it's really up to us how slowly we can glide away from it we won't we won't hit a peak like this again it's not just that you're in a car with paul mccartney and you're singing beatles songs but you're driving through liverpool yeah because that's going to fire neurons in mccartney and it clearly did, that yes, he's giving interviews all the time to everybody.

27:06And he's sometimes probably saying things he said before. But if you're driving him around Liverpool, he's gonna, neurons are gonna fire and he's gonna say things that maybe he hasn't said before. And that's the, that's the impression I got of that time you guys had together. Completely. Well, I think, I think what I realized that day is it's actually true for anybody who's left their hometown. Anybody who leaves their hometown, when you go back, like i can't remember what i did last week if you said to me what did you do last tuesday it would really take me a long time to go oh what day was tuesday i can remember the journey from my house to richard shed's house to greg's house to andy's house to school to the back of like that and so when you go home you are so in you're so acutely aware of the road you've traveled from it.

27:54You can see it. So being there with Paul, who, you know, he was kind of reticent to do it. You did mention this to me. You said that, obviously, he's the obvious person to go to, to do carpool karaoke, and that looked like it was going to happen. And then he was out, and then he was back in, and then he was out again. And then even on the day... What do you think the reticence was about? I just think, at that point, that segment, you could so clearly view it in numbers. And I think he felt like ah but you know i think when you're in like if justin bieber was in the car last week and one direction in their car next week i think he was aware of trying not to look like he was trying to grab onto something that was perhaps quite young and youthful and i was saying to him paul we've we've never done anything like this where we've traveled somewhere we are we have a stunt at the end we're going to go into your house you know we are giving this everything we're going to switch places in drive my car we are gonna we will not let this fail we will not even if one of these bits doesn't work there's going to be three other bits in the segment that will and and even on the day you know he he said to me we're in this hotel again like hair and makeup and this where we're going to leave from and microphones and all these things and he said to me um he said james can i can i speak to you for a minute and i said sure and we go into this walk-in closet and shuts the door and i say okay and he goes there i don't want to go in my house yeah i said what do you mean he said i don't want to go in i've never been in whenever i bring people to liverpool we just drive up outside and i show them the house and i drive on he said i feel a bit weird about it because it's now a national trust house so yeah it's all been put it's all looks the same and he said i just don't feel comfortable with it and i was thinking okay this is this is quite a big bit that we were going to do but i just went to him i said paul there is the only point of today is that you and I have a great time.

29:45And if we're having a great time, this is going to be great. You shouldn't be worried about anything. But I wouldn't dismiss anything now either. You don't know how we're going to feel. We'll have been in the car for 45 minutes at that point. So why don't we do this? We'll pull up outside. And if you give me a look that says you don't want to go in, we'll just drive on. And I'll take the hit for it, right? I'll say it was me. It was my fault. You shouldn't overthink it in any way. So we're doing it. It's all going great. We're having a great time. and we're singing the songs and we pull up outside and then I was thinking, oh shit, I should have said code word because what if he's giving me a look and I don't know what the look is.

30:23We never really worked out what it was. Because he does wink a lot in conversations. I know, what if he has gas? So I'm going, and it's actually, it's in the finished clip where I go, do you want to go inside? And he goes, yeah, let's go in. And I was like, okay. And then we, you know. But let's go in was the signal meaning let's not go in. let's leave you fucked it up and he's never forgotten it that day i've never seen people you know how now like you know you the now that the selfie is the thing everyone wants to i have never seen people not be wanting anything from someone who's famous they just want to thank him i've never seen anything like it like going up penny lane and going in the barber shop and all those things you know when people go oh my god it stopped traffic but it didn't not really i've traffic standstill people just every car around this roundabout just no one moving just there's paul mccartney on penny lane and then going into his going into that house and all these things i i've just never ever been so aware of like what an absolute privilege a day is to spend a day like this i've never i'll never ever forget it and it was also just a real gift to to beatles fans because that was a great format, perfect for him.

31:39It kind of leads me to my next thing, which is you did the show because you talk about, okay, I did that and now we're going to try and it's how long we glide away from it. You decide to wrap it up. It's very interesting because I don't know what your experience was, but I can't talk to many people about this. My experience was I was so glad I got to do it. I loved it every second of it. Not every second, but I loved a lot of it. And then when it was over, there hasn't been a moment where I've thought, gee, I wish I could be doing that, a late night show again. Exactly the same. Because I think I get one life.

32:11There's so much to try. There's so much to do. Did that. And so you, how do you feel? Exactly the same. I haven't, the only thing I miss really is, is being part of a gang, like going and sitting, sitting with people who I am every day would be blown away by how funny they are. I just could not, like, that's what I really miss. Sitting with Ian and Lauren and Cece and Sean and Dave, like, I just, sitting with these people. That was your mistake. You had funny writers. My God, did I ever. I only hired absolute terrible people. The worst. Right, Sona? The worst. They were awful. Yeah. Many of them are in this building.