Actor may not be universally loved, but at 36, and armed with an OBE, he faces daunting role, as Late Late Show host on US TV

James Corden is tired of talking about his career lows, and really, who could blame him? It is six years, after all, since 2009, the year in which the comedian’s blossoming career and reputation took an abrupt and savage hit, thanks to his unloved eponymous sketch show with Gavin & Stacey co-star Mathew Horne (“puerile and excruciating”, according to the New Statesman), a critically mauled movie, Lesbian Vampire Killers (“a witless mess”, said the Telegraph), and a calamitous performance hosting the Brit awards with Horne, which even Corden has acknowledged was “shit, because of ego”.

And yet he still finds himself asked repeatedly about the period he himself called “quite a dark time in my life”, which is evidently losing its charm. As he told one recent interviewer: “We’re four minutes into this interview and we’re talking about things that haven’t worked, and I don’t think that would be the case [with other performers].”

His irritation may be understandable given what Corden has gone on to achieve since. A third and final series of Gavin & Stacey claimed further awards for Corden and his co-writer Ruth Jones. His leading role in One Chance, a film about Britain’s Got Talent winner Paul Potts, was well received.

His performance in Sir Nicholas Hytner’s production of One Man, Two Guvnors for the National Theatre, a role conceived especially for Corden, won ecstatic reviews in London and Broadway and won him, stunningly, the Tony award for best actor, beating a shortlist that included Philip Seymour Hoffman, Frank Langella and James Earl Jones.

Just last month, the second series of The Wrong Mans, an action-comedy co-written by and starring Corden, secured the kind of reviews for which performers wait a lifetime (“Just ridiculously good”, said the Daily Mail. “I’m not ashamed to say I stood and clapped at the end, on my own in a quiet room,” wrote the Guardian’s Julia Raeside.”)

All that, it transpires, is just the beginning. It has already been a notable 2015 for Corden, now 36, who was “thrilled, overwhelmed and honoured” to be awarded an OBE in the New Year honours list for services to drama. Next week sees the release of Into the Woods, Disney’s movie version of the Stephen Sondheim musical, in which Corden plays a leading role.

And in March, in arguably the biggest challenge of them all, the comedian will move with his young family to Los Angeles to take over hosting The Late Late Show on CBS, one of the leading programmes in America’s ultra-competitive late night TV market.

The late night shows are a huge cultural institution and, says the US TV writer Brian Moylan, “usually when someone is installed in one of these positions, they have it for life. It’s more like a knighthood than a job. That’s why it’s a big deal he got it … to give this guy that no one had ever heard of a late night TV show seemed a little bit crazy.”

It is a “frightening” prospect for the actor, admits the producer and director Ben Winston, who is Corden’s best friend and close collaborator, and who will move with him to the US to become executive producer of the Late Late Show. So why, after his remarkable stage success, and with another hit sitcom under his belt and his movie career taking off, did Corden want to take such a huge risk with an audience that has no idea who he is?

“It wasn’t a quick decision,” says Winston, “but James is hugely ambitious and full of ideas and a hard worker, and he doesn’t like to do things that are easy and comfortable. I think he saw the CBS show as a real challenge for him.

“Apart from the Broadway circle and Into the Woods, he’s not known in America. And here he can speak every night into each American household and show what he can do as an interviewer and a comedian and a singer and an actor – whatever he wants to be.”

The pair met in the early noughties on the set of the Channel 4 drama Teachers, in which Corden had a small part and Winston, straight out of school, was a runner. They immediately hit it off because “I think we saw in each other huge ambition”, says Winston. “We would spend hours talking about the kind of TV we wanted to make and what we wanted to do with our careers and our lives.”

In 2009, after Corden had won plaudits at the National, on Broadway and later on film for his role in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, and become wildly famous overnight thanks to Gavin & Stacey, the pair worked together for the first time in a short film for Comic Relief, directed by Winston, in which Corden’s sitcom character Smithy encounters the England football team. It led to an incident that the director says sums up his friend.

Though they had secured the agreement of players including David Beckham, John Terry and Ashley Cole to appear in the film, the then manager, Fabio Capello, insisted that the young director had 20 minutes to film the sketch, “not one minute more”.

“So we got everyone lined up, we got the England players in, they take ages to sit down, and I’m thinking, you’re eating into my 20 minutes, and I call action, and James says: ‘Whoah, whoah, Ben, I need a minute with you, sorry.’

“I take off my headset, I run over to him, he puts me in a corner and he just whispers, ‘I’m Jeremy from Teachers, you’re the runner from Teachers, and we’ve got the whole of the England team waiting for us. I just thought we should take a minute.’ I just love that about James. He doesn’t take anything for granted, he will stop and go: ‘This is an amazing thing.’”

Corden was born in 1978 and grew up in Buckinghamshire, the second of three children of an RAF bandsman turned Christian book salesman father and social worker mother. His earliest memories, as described in his aptly-titled 2011 autobiography “May I Have Your Attention, Please?”, were of craving the rush of approval that came from laughter and applause, something he later called “a lust for people to pay me attention”. It has, he has acknowledged, occasionally become a dark compulsion.

He scraped through school with little interest in anything but drama (“I was always the kid who thought it was a good idea to set off the fire alarm”), leaving with two GCSEs for a role in the chorus in a West End production. That led to TV parts here and there and, eventually, the History Boys.

It was Bennett, frequently present at rehearsals, who first encouraged Corden to write (“People had told me to think about writing before,” the actor has said, “but there’s a big difference between your Aunty Marian telling you that you could be a funny writer and Alan Bennett”). The playwright’s one tip: “Be warm.”

If following Bennett’s advice helped catapult its co-writer to celebrity – Gavin and Stacey, though bitingly funny, was sweet and uncynical at heart – as the programme became more famous, Corden struggled to emulate its easy likeability in his personal life.

The actor’s career missteps weren’t the only reason his reputation soured, thanks to a period of boorish, celebrity-obsessed behaviour and a number of unpleasant award ceremony appearances. Corden may have been feted as a performer, but he remains far from universally loved, and the social media reaction to his OBE award demonstrated that there are many who have never forgiven him for the charmless years of tabloid ubiquity.

To judge anyone by their Twitter critics is unjust, says Winston, “and with 4.5 million followers I would say he is not doing too badly on social media”. But there is no question that to make a success of his new US role, Corden will have to project the warmth and likeability that Bennett advocated, and which he can undoubtedly show, as well as his enormous comedic talent.

It is not the only challenge he faces, says Moylan. All of the late night shows have seen declining audiences for years, with young people increasingly relying on viral clips online to catch up with the best content. Craig Ferguson, another Brit whom Corden will replace, had a small but devoted audience, says Moylan, “but he never did anything that went viral or really made a huge contribution to the cultural conversation. Unless Corden can figure out a way to be a hit on the internet, I’m afraid he’s going to suffer the same fate.” In that context, a huge Twitter following, friendly or hostile, certainly helps.

Winston is confident his friend, who married former charity worker Julia Carey in 2012 and is now father to a young son and baby daughter, has reached a point in his life where “he’s ready to let his work do the talking”. The CBS show may be nerve-wracking, he says, but apart from everything else it is a steady job that will allow Corden, now five stone lighter than at his peak, to spend time with his family.

“For the next few years he has something he can get his teeth into, to be the multifaceted performer that I know he can be, and at the same time to go home to his young family every night. And that’s probably a lovely thing for him to think about.”

The all-rounder

Born 22 August 1978

Career Achieved enormous TV success in 2007 as co-writer and star of Gavin & Stacey, leading to acclaimed performances at the National Theatre and on Broadway in One Man, Two Guvnors. Shortly to take up role hosting The Late Late Show for CBS in Los Angeles.

High point Bafta for best comedy performance for Gavin & Stacey in 2008, Tony Award for best actor, beating Philip Seymour Hoffman, Frank Langella and James Earl Jones, in 2012.

Low point Both his sketch show Horne & Corden and film Lesbian Vampire Killers in 2009 were panned by critics.

What he says “I wish I didn’t get carried away sometimes. I try as much as I can now to take a slight step back. But then, I was always the kid at school who thought it was a good idea to set off the fire alarm.”

What they say “The point about James is that for a couple of years he allowed people to get the wrong impression of him. He appeared to be just some fat celebrity with a sharp tongue. The real James is the James who comes in eight times a week and gives everything to this physically exhausting show” – Sir Nicholas Hytner, director of One Man, Two Guvnors.

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