Four days on the job and only six people on the staff, James Corden didn’t have much to tell critics at the winter press tour Monday about “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” which starts March 23on CBS.
“We literally know nothing,” the comedian told reporters. “It’s completely pointless our being here. We should be at work figuring out what the show is instead of telling you that we don’t know what the show is.”
Still, they probed, and he said things like: “The truth is, there is no blueprint for our show”
But it was possible to pick up a few notions at what’s coming this spring, such as a gentler approach to guests.
“I really feel like in this current climate in this time, we want to make a warm show, a show that a show that never feels spiky, a show that feels warm,” Corden says. “Because so much of what you see and read and are polluted by is not pleasant right now, and I feel like if we can make a show that just sort of reaches out to people, really, and reminds that it is there are still wonderful things and it is still great that we could do that.”
The British personality is caught between the temptation to reinvent the form and be reverent to the traditions.
“There’s a funny thing that happens when you get a show,” Corden said. “You start throwing around crazy ideas like, “What if we just do it in a white box?” And then you’re aware that you’re you don’t want to look like the arrogant British guy who has no respect for the very institution that we’re taking on.”
He brings his own set of influences that may be different than other U.S. talk show hosts, he says.
“My influences are, you know, Graham Norton, Chris Evans, Jonathan Ross, Michael Parkinson,” Corden says, and they are influences “purely by location of where I grew up.”
Accordingly, they ”are not Johnny Carson or Cavett, Letterman, Leno. I never grew up with those guys every night. So I hope that I could bring a flavor of the people who I love and admire from home.”
But one component of the talk show may be eliminated — the monologue.
“James is not a traditional standup comedian,” says show producer Rob Crabbe, who came over from “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.” “Straightforward joke telling is not something that he does a ton of, and so we are going to sort of consider other paths besides the traditional monologue.”
It’s likely that guests would come on earlier, too, since every minute is important on a late late show when the clock gets later.
“Being the host of this great party at 12:30,” Crabbe says, “you want to have your guests have the best time possible. So we would love to be able to get guests out pretty early.”
As far as guests, Corden says, “I would love to introduce lots of people to American audiences. There are brilliant bands here who haven’t been on TV who I would love to give a platform. There are great comedians here — brilliant, brilliant comedians who I would like to introduce to an audience and say, ‘Get on board with this guy. I think you’re going to love him.’ Nothing would make me happier than that.”
It’s very possible some elements of the old Craig Ferguson reign will be retained.
Executive producer Ben Winston who came to the U.S. with UK where he worked with Corden, says he’s been spending most of the week they’ve been here “meeting everybody on Craig’s team.”
”It was a brilliant show that we loved,” Winston said, “and I’m looking forward to meeting everybody in it, from the directors to the bookers to the writers. We just haven’t got that far yet.”
One announcement that has been made for Corden’s “Late Late Show” was the hiring of comedian and musician Reggie Watts as leader of the house band, a role he currently fills on IFC’s “Comedy Bang! Bang!”
“I feel like the luckiest man on earth,” Corden said of Watts. “I’m just going to get to sit and watch him every night.
“I would walk to Brooklyn to watch him perform,”he said, “so to sit and to be in a room with him and him be in the absolute makeup of our show and the DNA of what it is is the most exciting thing for me.”
It was the same kind of enthusiasm CBS executives had for Corden.
CBS chief Nina Tassler, who said she saw Corden in his Tony-winning role in “One Man, Two Guvnors” on Broadway, said, “You knew that you were in the presence of someone a little crazy and someone incredibly talented.”
She said she looked at “so many talented and diverse people” for the 12:30 slot, but when Corden came in “to say we were mesmerized by him is an understatement.”
“He is so vibrant, so entertaining. He is a fearless actor, and he is a multi hyphenate. I mean, he’s an actor, he’s a writer, he’s a performer, he’s a singer, he’s a dancer,” Tassler said. “He’s a combination of Jack Black and Fred Astaire. He’s pretty magic.”
And on top of all that, his work on British talk shows was different. “You saw how facile he was in the interview format, how he has such he exudes such warmth, and that any of the people that he was interviewing, any of the people, they just adored him. There are the funniest segments with him and David Beckham, and you just realize, it doesn’t matter who he talks to, they fall under his spell, and he’s enchanting, so that’s what influenced our decision.”
As Corden said, when he finally came on stage for his own press session, he said, “No pressure.”