James Corden spoke about what made him leave The Late Late Show after eight years.
Corden is set to leave the late-night show in the US in mid-2023 after announcing his departure in April 2022.
He appeared on the Drew Barrymore Show on Monday, during which Barrymore asked him when he realized it was time to “leave.”
“Look, it’s by no means easy to walk away from something… [when] I will never work in a better environment than the one I work in now,” he said with tears in his eyes.
“Nothing about leaving the show was due to the fact that I didn’t like it, I like it. But the truth is that this decision was very easy for me, because I always knew that this was an adventure, and I never considered it the final destination.”
Corden then recalled a conversation with his 11-year-old son Max that made him realize that he needed to prioritize his family.
“I was filming [Mammals] on Sunday and went downstairs, it was about 6 a.m., and my son, who was 10 years old at the time, was sitting on the stairs and asked: “Are you working today?” and I said, “Yes,” he said, “I thought, but today is Sunday.”
“And I said:”I know, buddy, but this schedule is just everywhere. We just have to do it because we have quite a bit of time before we have to go back and do the show,” and his face just drooped.
“I got in the car, called my wife Jules and said: “I realized, at best, we have another six years when Max even remotely wants to be near us, and I can’t waste another one.”
“The choice was to say, ‘Well, if I really want to do this other job, it can’t be at the expense of our children, our family.’
Corden is going to move back to London with his family when he finishes his run on Late Late.
“I’ll be in a mess at the last show,” he said. “I will cry my eyes out, but deep down I will know that the best thing for me and the best thing for us as a family is to put down roots in London, and it seems absolutely right in every sense.”
Deadline critic Pete Hammond recently reported in his column that Corden told him he was originally supposed to star in “The Whale” before Brendan Fraser. He then reportedly worried that, at 44, he was too young to “do justice to [the role]” compared to the 54-year-old Fraser.
