James Corden reveals his hopes and fears as host of the revamped "Late Late Show." Actor Ethan Hawke and pianist Seymour Bernstein talk stage fright and their new documentary. Mr. T gets a reality show gig.
James Corden's 'Late Late Show' is like 'Stephen Colbert's brother with ADHD'
Starting on Monday night, 36-year-old British actor James Corden will take over as host of "The Late Late Show” on CBS, replacing Craig Ferguson. He is bringing along a new bandleader: comedian and musician Reggie Watts.
Corden is well-known in the United Kingdom, but most Americans are probably familiar with Corden mainly from his recent role as the Baker in "Into the Woods." Now he has relocated his family, which includes two young children, from London to Los Angeles for the new gig.
We visited Corden yesterday at his other new home, a stage on the CBS lot that’s been dressed to look a little like a cabaret crossed with an intimate off-Broadway theater — complete with a fully-stocked bar.
Interview Highlights:
When you're thinking about designing the look and feel of the show, how conscious are you of what has been done on talk shows in the past? How do you try to create something that's both reverent and new?
In every sense of our show, we want to honor and acknowledge the traditions of late night, which is why we've got a skyline of Los Angeles, and there's a couch and a desk. But then we're like, How can we put a twist on that to make it feel fresh and original somehow? One way is that, when we do our interviews, I'm going to sit here and not behind my desk. We're also going to bring all of our guests out at the same time, so all of our guests will sit together for all of the chat segments of the show.
A talk show ends, and then our show starts, and nowhere else on the spectrum of television would that ever happen. No one would say, "Oh, from 9 until 10 we've got a hospital drama, and then 10 to 11 we're going to have another hospital drama with the same diseases," you know? It's very much a late night talk show in so many senses — in no way is this going to be a radical thing — but we just want to put our own spin and take on it.
So it's like the chamber orchestra following the symphony?
I guess so, yeah, or Stephen Colbert's brother with ADHD.
What have been the great challenges of moving to Southern California?
The biggest challenge for us, for my wife and I, is that my wife gave birth to our daughter 14 weeks ago. That in itself is pretty much the biggest thing you can ever do, and then when she was 7 weeks old, to move to California with our 3-year-old son also was... I mean, if I think about the grandparents that are at home, and the aunts and the uncles, it's heartbreaking, really. So in a sense I think I owe it to them for this show to be a success and I owe it to my wife for taking the plunge and saying, "Yes, this is an adventure we should go on as a family."
It's thrilling for me to even visit America. I didn't grow up in a family that was very wealthy, and we never really came on holiday anywhere abroad. We'd occasionally go to the south of France, once or twice, but mostly we'd be in a caravan in the U.K., which is not a pleasant place to spend your summer. I never got to come to America until I was 26, for a play called "The History Boys," which we did in New York, and from the second I got here I just fell in love with the optimism and the positivity of the place, as well as the feeling amongst people of wanting you to do well.
We see Reggie Watts's setup here. Why did you feel he was the perfect companion for you on the show?
He was on a list of one. Having him and a band, a band that he picked and chose — he went to all four corners of the world looking for this band — and I feel like if you're trying to create a show where you want people to say, "I don't know what it will be tonight," he's the single greatest comedian for that. When you go and see him, you don't know which Reggie's going to turn up.
As the show goes on and people get to know me, like I'm very conscious of the fact that we have to introduce audiences to me, and then Reggie's just going to fly, man. He's just going to fly. It's going to be a shining light in our show, no question. He is the best comedic musical performer, not just in this country but possibly the world.
How did you first meet him?
I just sought him out. I said, "Reggie, I've been given this job, and I want you to be part of it." And, in the same way I did, he felt very reticent about taking this job, because his career was on a path and he didn't feel that this was necessarily going to be on that path. Neither did I.
But as we talked about the show, I just said, "Look, all of the things that you are concerned about are the same things that I'm concerned about. We're just going to have fun." And as soon as we started talking about it like that and talking about an atmosphere, like I would say to him, "This show can be whatever you want it to be. You can run the band, or if you say to me, 'I want to take a camera and I want four minutes,' it's yours, it's done. That's what I want the show to feel like."
As we sit here today we're just a couple of days away from the premiere. In terms of the butterflies in your stomach, how does it compare to the opening of a Broadway show or singing in front of Stephen Sondheim for "Into the Woods"?
Putting together a show like this is a very strange thing, because you feel very much like you're just one of a team. But then there comes a moment where they all just tap you on the shoulder and say, "Good luck out there, man." You feel incredibly on your own in those moments. But you just have to remember that this is the very thing that you signed up for, and this is what you wanted.
Ultimately, you've got to Google Earth yourself and realize that this doesn't matter. If this show doesn't work — and it might not — it doesn't mean I'm bad and it doesn't mean my career or life are over, and it's going to pale in comparison with those phone calls you get at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, or the ones that wake you up in the middle of the night, when something's actually gone wrong.
This is not my wife or my children or my parents or my friends, and that's what you have to focus on. Then you just need to take a deep breath and say, "I've just got to enjoy it. I've got to enjoy this so much, and the harder I work, the better this show's going to be." I'm going to stop at nothing to make this show the single greatest show that has ever existed in this time slot.
"The Late Late Show with James Corden" debuts on CBS on Monday, March 23.
Ethan Hawke bonded with pianist Seymour Bernstein over stage fright and made a documentary about him
Ethan Hawke has a confession to make: He suffers from stage fright. But after meeting renowned pianist Seymour Bernstein at a dinner party, Hawke not only learned to accept his nervousness — he now embraces it.
Bernstein too suffered from crushing stage fright and had a lot to teach Hawke about how it informed his career as a musician. The conversations between Hawke and Bernstein naturally led Hawke to make the documentary “Seymour: An Introduction.”
Seymour: An Introduction trailer
When the film made its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival last fall, the Frame’s host John Horn sat down with Hawke and Bernstein to talk about the film.
Interview Highlights
When did you realize this was a film and when did you decide it was a film that you wanted to make?
Ethan Hawke: Really my first thought was, somebody should do this. I’ve come to the point in my life where I realize that our life is who we spend time with. I remember my wife saying to me, "You know, you want to spend time with this person and you’re so busy that this would be a great way to get to be together, is to have something creative to work on together."
Do you remember your first meeting with Ethan?
Seymour Bernstein: I certainly do. Let me put it this way: It was electricity that coursed through the both of us. I don’t know who started the conversation, but in no time at all it centered on stage fright.
What did you hear Seymour telling you that changed the way you thought about the work you were doing?
Hawke: When I talked with him about being nervous... it felt like a terrible secret to me. It felt like somebody who knows what they’re doing wouldn’t be as nervous as I am... He said this thing that I know he says to a lot of students, that you have a right to be nervous... that this is important.
What you talk about a lot in your film, it’s obviously focused on piano. But it’s really not about piano.
Hawke: So much of the same ethos apply: discipline, hard work, working well with others, listening to others, knowing yourself... And I think that’s why I was so moved by you [Seymour] is that, first of all it’s nice to know that you’re not alone. All concert musicians of serious music suffer stage fright almost more intensely than anyone else in the world. It’s a very live-and-die profession.
Bernstein: Now what became very obvious to Ethan during our conversation is that what we were talking about had not only to do with acting or playing the piano, but with our lives itself. If it only gets confined to your artform, it’s very minimized, you see.