James Corden emotionally recalls conversation with 11-year-old son that prompted ‘Late Late Show’ exit
James Corden has opened up about what made him decide to leave The Late Late Show after eight years.
Corden is set to depart the US late night show in mid-2023 after announcing his departure in April 2022.
He appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show on Monday, during which Barrymore asked him when he knew it was the right time to “walk away”.
“Look, it’s not easy in any way to walk away from something… [when] I’ll never work in a better environment than the one I work in now,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
“Nothing about leaving the show was to do with not enjoying it, I love it. But the truth is it became a very easy decision because I always knew it was an adventure and I never ever considered it to be the final destination.”
Corden then recalled a conversation with his 11-year-old son Max that made him realise he needed to prioritise his family.
“I was filming [Mammals] on a Sunday and I came downstairs, it was about 6am and my son, who was 10 at the time, was sat on the stairs and he said, ‘Are you working today?’ and I said, ‘I am,’ and he said, ‘I thought, but it’s Sunday.’
“And I said, ‘I know buddy, but this schedule’s just all over the place. We’ve just got to get it done because we only have a tiny amount of time before we have to go back and do the show’ and his face just kind of dropped.
“I got in the car and I called my wife Jules and I said, ‘I’ve realised, best case scenario we have six more summers where Max even remotely wants to be around us and I cannot waste another one.’
“The choice was to go, ‘Well if I really want to do this other work, that cannot be at the expense of our children, our family’”.
Corden is set to relocate back to London with his family when he finishes his run on Late Late.
“I will be a mess on that last show,” he said. “I will cry my eyes out, but I will know at my core that the best thing for me and the best thing for us as a family is to put down some roots in London, and it feels absolutely right in every single way.”
Recently, Deadline critic Pete Hammond revealed in a column that Corden had told him he was originally set to play the lead role in The Whale before Brendan Fraser. He then reportedly worried that at 44, he was too young to “do [the role] justice” compared to 54-year-old Fraser.
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Emma Wilkes
NME
