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Yawning mightily and allowing his head to dip slightly forward, James Corden, host of “The Late Late Show” on CBS, let himself drift off to sleep on air again, a problem that has been plaguing the variety show host almost every night since his program premiered in March. Corden has started warning his live audiences that he “may not make it through this one” in his opening monologue every evening.
“I’m James Corden and this is the Late Late Show,” said Corden at the beginning of his last taping. “And boy, is it late. It is past my bedtime. I should be in bed by now! This show is so late. Why is this show on so late? Why would they expect people to be up at this hour? Maybe people in a different time zone watch this. That’s gotta be it.”
Audiences report that they can tell when Corden is about to drift off to sleep because he’ll start getting words mixed up and each blink will start to last longer and longer until finally his head dips all the way down and he starts snoring. “It is definitely late,” said audience member Liza Mathews, who watched Corden snooze restfully for 45 minutes before giving up and leaving the studio. “I guess it’s hard to blame him. I’m sure it makes it harder that late night TV is so, so boring.”
Corden’s producers are less forgiving, as the show host is usually fast asleep before he can interview the night’s guest, and the snoozing entertainer can’t throw to commercial.
“That night’s producer didn’t know what to do the first time, so we just kept on him for a good three, four hours without stopping,” said Lead Camera Operator Julio Marquez. “Just straight footage of a sleeping man. No commercials or anything. People who were counting on a back-to-back rebroadcast of this week’s and last week’s episodes of ‘Mike and Molly’ totally missed out on both of them. It was a disaster.”
Corden reports he has tried everything, from drinking coffee before the show to trying to subvert the long-standing and predictable late night format.
“One of the scariest moments was when I had a nightmare,” said Corden, who woke up screaming in front of the live studio audience. “Thankfully, I was able to get back to sleep before the musical guest got the chance to play. They would’ve made quite the racket.”
According to the Nielsen ratings system, Corden’s show attracts an average audience of 11.9 million presumably dozing Americans a night.
