James Corden to return to London stage in political drama The Constituent

Posted on March 19, 2024 by Admin

Joe Penhall’s new play marks the talkshow host’s first theatre role since One Man, Two Guvnors and will see him star opposite Anna Maxwell Martin at the Old Vic

James Corden is to return to the London stage for his first role since the National Theatre’s blockbuster farce One Man, Two Guvnors.

The star, who last year left his US late-night talkshow after eight years, will appear in a new political drama by Joe Penhall. The Constituent, at the Old Vic theatre, is set in an MP’s constituency office. Corden will play “an ex-serviceman with a life in freefall” while Anna Maxwell Martin (Motherland, Line of Duty) is an opposition backbencher whose ideals of public office are tested by his demands. Zachary Hart completes the cast as a parliamentary protection officer. The play will be directed by the Old Vic’s artistic director, Matthew Warchus, and is said to explore “the conflict between public service and personal safety”.

The Friends Carpool Karaoke is even more mortifying than the reunion

Posted on June 17, 2021 by Admin

The stars of Friends initially seem more relaxed in James Corden’s golf cart than on stage at the recent reunion. But if you look closely, it’s utter horror you see

Like everyone, I had two main criticisms of last month’s Friends reunion special. The first is that, after almost 30 years of watching the cast suspended in the throes of perfect youth, the sight of their weird, cosmetically altered faces in HD came as such a shock that I would have preferred it to be called something like All Things Decay: A Harrowing Reminder That Everything We Love Will One Day Be Dead. The second is that James Corden didn’t make it enough about him.

Oh, sure, he made it plenty about him. He hosted the thing, despite having no tangible connection to Friends. And, yes, when the cast came on, he spoke for more than two minutes before bothering to ask them a question. But did he make it about himself, in a truly Cordenesque way? No, he did not.

Prince Harry defends Netflix’s The Crown in James Corden interview

Posted on February 26, 2021 by Admin

Duke of Sussex says he is happier with series than news stories about Meghan or his family

The Duke of Sussex has defended the Netflix series The Crown, saying that – while it was not “strictly accurate” – it portrayed the pressures of royal life.

In an interview with James Corden for the US programme The Late Late Show, Prince Harry said he minded the intrusions of the media into his family’s life much more than the miniseries, which was “obviously fiction”.

The Prom review – is Ryan Murphy’s musical the first film of the Biden era?

Posted on December 1, 2020 by Admin

Taste the treacle as Nicole Kidman’s Broadway liberals rebuke a rural high school – and learn a few things about themselves

Like High School Musical on some sort of absinthe/Xanax cocktail, The Prom is an outrageous work of steroidal show tune madness, directed by the dark master himself, Ryan “Glee” Murphy, who is to jazz-hands musical theatre what Nancy Meyers is to upscale romcom or Friedrich Nietzsche to classical philology.

Meryl Streep and James Corden play Dee Dee Allen and Barry Glickman, two fading Broadway stars in trouble after their latest show closes ignominiously; it is called Eleanor!, a misjudged musical version of the life of Eleanor Roosevelt with Dee Dee in the title role and Barry as Franklin D Roosevelt. Barry also has financial difficulties (“I had to declare bankruptcy after my self-produced Notes on a Scandal”). After unhelpful press notices turn their opening night party at Sardi’s into a wake, Dee Dee and Barry find themselves drowning their sorrows with chorus-line trooper Angie (Nicole Kidman) and unemployed-actor-turned-bartender Trent (played by The Book of Mormon’s Andrew Rannells). How on earth are they going to turn their careers around?

Then Angie sees a news story trending on Twitter: a gay teenager in Indiana has been prevented by her high school from bringing a girl as a date to the prom. The teen in question is Emma (a nice performance from Jo Ellen Pellman, like a young Elisabeth Moss), her secret girlfriend is Alyssa (Ariana DeBose) and it is Alyssa’s fiercely conservative mom (Kerry Washington) who is behind the ban. Our heroic foursome declare that they will sweep into hicksville with all their enlightened values and glamorous celebrity, and campaign against this homophobia, boosting their prestige in the biz. They gatecrash a tense school meeting, declaring dramatically: “We are liberals from Broadway!”