Craig Duncan claims “Late Late Show” host James Corden called him “stupid” and shouted at him over how to direct his episode of the panel show “A League of Their Own.”
As James Corden closes in on his final episode as host of CBS’s “The Late Late Show,” he’s been hit with more allegations of bad behavior. This time, it comes from a British director who worked with him on a panel show.
Craig Duncan shared his story via a 10-minute YouTube video where he detailed just one alleged experience with Corden on the set of “A League of Their Own.” Corden hosted the comedy series from 2010 to 2019.
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“It was season seven, episode three and I’ll never forget it,” Duncan said in his video after describing Corden as “the most difficult and obnoxious presenter I have ever worked with.”
According to Duncan, the producers of the show appeared to have already known, because before he even took the job, he said he was asked, “How are you at working with difficult presenters?”
Before he signed on, he was invited to watch a taping to see if it would be a good fit. While there, he claims to have witnessed Corden lose his cool over a joke on a cue card.
“He just looked at it like, ‘That’s not funny, that’s not funny. It’s s—. We have to rewrite this.'” He dismissed this as a possible bad day (or joke) and agreed to come on board.
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Duncan described the day of his shoot as having “a creeping sense of anxiety,” and says that Corden snapped about how to film the show.
According to Duncan, Corden shouted, “What the f— is going on here? It’s obvious what you do. You put a camera there, you put a camera there, and you put a camera there… It’s so obvious.'”
He added that Corden said it was “so obvious” how to shoot the scene and wrapped his diatribe by telling Duncan, “You’re stupid!”
The director said that they did film it the way Corden was insisting — he even placated the host by telling the crew, “He’s absolutely right, guys, let’s do that, that’s the best thing to do” — because that’s how they’d intended to film it already.
He further claims that Corden showed up 45 minutes late to film a segment that Duncan says could have been taken care of in six minutes.
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“Cheers, James, you got your way,” he said in the video. “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!”
While unsubstantiated, Duncan’s story does line up with Mel B’s recent assertion that Corden is “the biggest d—head celebrity” she’s ever met. The Spice Girl made the comment on “The Big Narstie Show” in the UK, as reported by HuffPost, and backed it by talking about how people should be treated on sets.
“You always have to be nice to the people that you work with, whether it be production, camera guys, sound, lighting,” she said. “We all work for the same thing. So you should always be nice, and he hasn’t been very nice.”
The late-night host also got into a back-and-forth with a restaurateur in New York City late last year. Corden was initially banned from Balthazar in SoHo for what owner Keith McNally called abusive behavior to his staff. Corden eventually apologized on-air for that incident after McNally’s Instagram post went viral, as detailed by TMZ.
James Corden’s final episode of “The Late Late Show” is scheduled for Thursday, April 27.
