Late-night talk show host James Corden said he owes his career to theater, and the ongoing pandemic has him losing sleep over its fate.
“It’s genuinely keeping me up at night,” Corden said in a podcast interview on “The Big Ticket with Marc Malkin.” “I worry about the theater. I worry about the bounce-back that I hope it can have and when that can happen and how it can happen and if it can. It does play on my mind greatly. My entire career started with doing musicals in the West End or plays at the National Theatre that I was very fortunate that they would come to New York.”
He noted that many businesses, from Amazon to Netflix, have gained financially as a result of the stay-at-home orders and overall safety guidelines in the U.S. He praised Netflix for donating money in July to a U.K. theater fund and hopes other streamers will follow its lead.
“I do think it would be great if the companies that are in one respect benefiting from COVID — if you look at price shares [of] streamers and all those things — I think some acknowledgement of the volume of arts and artists that have come from that environment, I think it would be really in their best interests to try and support theater in that way, the Amazons and the Apples.”
While Corden has resumed production of “The Late Late Show” in a studio he said he hasn’t been thinking about the return of “Carpool Karaoke” because he doesn’t such a lively and joyful segment is appropriate during these times.
You can the full interview above.