Less than six months after famed New York City restaurateur Keith McNally banned (then unbanned, then banned again) late-night host James Corden from his perennial hotspot Balthazar for reportedly being an “abusive” “tiny cretin of a man,” someone else is coming for the Cats star. As The Wrap reports, director Craig Duncan — who worked with Corden a decade ago — just posted a YouTube video in which he called out Corden as “the most difficult and obnoxious presenter I’ve ever worked with.”
In 2013, Duncan was asked to direct an episode of A League of Their Own, a sports-focused panel show that Corden hosted from 2010 to 2019. Before he even agreed to shoot the episode, Duncan says the production company asked how he was working with “difficult presenters.” Having previously worked with The Three Tenors, Duncan says he was pretty used to prickly personalities. “You can’t get much more prima donna than an opera singer.” But Duncan had yet to meet James Corden.
The task was to film a sort of MasterChef-like cooking competition, and he and the rest of the creative team were given very little time to build the set — or shoot it. But Duncan was thrilled with how it all turned out, and made sure to let the team know. “They busted their guts to get this thing ready, and I appreciated it,” Duncan said. Corden, however, was a different story.
While Duncan really enjoyed meeting the show’s other personalities, at one point he started noticing “a creeping sense of anxiety.” Eventually, Corden made his way onto the set while the director commenced shooting the segment. Eventually, the segment got to the part where the winner was going to be revealed. As they only had about six minutes left, Duncan realized their original plan for shooting would take too long, so he huddled with his team to come up with a quick Plan B. “We were working it out, to save time, when old buggaluggs pipes up: ‘What the f**k is going on here? It’s obvious what you do. You put a camera there, you put a camera there, you put a camera there, and you put a camera there… It’s so obvious how you shoot it. You’re stupid.’”
Rather than get annoyed, Duncan played along for appeasement’s sake and shot the rest of the segment the way Corden had suggested, which ended up taking about 40 minutes longer. “So cheers, James,” said Duncan. “You got your way. Well done. Well done for treading all over my toes. I don’t care; I’ll get paid at the end of the day. And I hope I never, ever work with you again.”
Since the media picked up on the story, Duncan posted a postscript statement on his YouTube page:
This video is just intended as a benign anecdote. I have a tiny following, so didn’t think it would be seen TBH. For the media to pick up on James Corden being rude to me 10 years ago is insane. It’s a non-story as far as I’m concerned. Bosses are ‘short’ with staff all the time. James never told me “You’re stupid” in fact, I can’t remember the exact things he said… it was more a rant at me about camera positions with an element of swearing involved. It probably “felt” worse than I portray in the video, but it was certainly as bad as I say it was. In the video I’m mumbling “It’s stupid,” not saying he said I was stupid. I’d have walked if he had.
(Via The Wrap)