James Corden had “one foot out the door” two years before he wound up leaving The Late Late Show.
Corden, who left CBS’ 12:30 a.m. show on April 27, 2023, after eight years at the helm, recounted his decision to leave on Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend.
“I knew for quite a while. I was gonna leave at year five. I was real close,” Corden told O’Brien. “I genuinely had, like, one foot out the door.”
But Corden said he’s glad he ultimately decided to stick it out a bit longer.
“I’m very, very pleased that I chose to stay,” he continued. “If I’d left then, I think it would have been way too soon. I would have thought, ‘What did you leave for? You were just reaping the rewards of it being good—getting good guests, all that stuff.’
The Late Late Show host also revealed some of what had made him hesitant to continue the show.
“I really felt like so many things changed… When we started the show, Obama was the president,” he told Conan. “Then it was Trump. Then it felt like it changed, and somehow if you didn’t do a deeply political monologue, you were somehow complicit with the Trump Organization. Which I didn’t quite understand, not being from here.”
In August 2019, the talk show host renewed his contract with CBS through 2022.
“And then it was COVID,” Corden continued. (From March through June of 2020, Corden hosted a remote version of his show from home amid the pandemic.) “So then you’re doing a show in your garage, and you’re just trying to keep as many of the team in work as you can… So I was like, ‘Oh, okay. It’s time to go now. It’s time to move away from this.’”
The host was quick to point out that he looks back fondly on his time at the show. “Again, I will always be dumbfounded that it was something I was able to do,” he said.
Yet Corden admits it’s not a job he misses in any way—except one.
“The only thing I miss, really, is being part of a gang,” he told O’Brien. “Going and sitting with people who I, every day, would be blown away by how funny they are.”
“I miss the idea of having an idea in the morning, and being like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it tonight,’” the host continued. “I certainly don’t miss walking out of a curtain… I don’t miss going, ‘Stick around. We’ll be right back.’ I don’t miss any of the actual doing of the show. I would go so far as to say I haven’t thought about it.”
“I think you know when it’s time to… go and do the next thing,” noted O’Brien, who decided to end his own 28-year late-night run in 2021. “My experience was: I was so glad I got to do it… 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 a late-night show again.’”
“Exactly the same,” Corden replied.
