News / TV

James Corden on the reality of Carpool Karaoke

You may have seen a viral video on social media this week catching James Corden in the act of filming a “Carpool Karaoke” segment for The Late Late Show, without actually driving the car.

Corden decided to address this on his show, after joking that the Tweet video, with 13 million views and counting, has more viewers than some episodes of Carpool Karaoke.

“I know this looks bad,” he says after sharing with us the video that went viral of him spotted on the streets, in an SUV with Justin Bieber, being towed.

“But I just want to say, right now, that I always drive the car unless we’re doing something where we think it might not be safe, like a dance routine or a costume change or if I’m drunk.”

Corden continued:

“I’m just shocked I’ve done something that upset people more than Cats… Ninety-five percent of the time I really am endangering the lives of the world’s biggest pop stars, but this is a TV show, not everything is real. Our show doesn’t tape after midnight. We tape at 5:00 pm and pretend that it’s late. Reggie Watts isn’t actually here, he’s 100 percent CGI. And I hate to be the bearer of even more bad news, but while we’re getting things out in the open, I don’t actually need them to help me get to work, right? Often, I’m at work already. We’ve also never once in the history of doing that bit ever used the carpool lane. There’s not even a carpool lane on my way to work. And I just thought that we all knew this and I’m sorry that you were so deep into the reality of Carpool Karaoke, but it’s TV and sometimes we do stuff just for the sake of entertainment, OK?”

Corden then, for the sake of transparency, listed onscreen the segments that used tows (Meghan Trainor, Cardi B, Migos, Chance the Rapper, and the Biebs) followed by a scrolling list of the ones where he drove. “And I want credit for it. Because I was raised driving on a completely different side of the road.”

And then he plugged the spin-off series for Apple TV.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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