It’s a bit surprising Tony victor James Corden has taken this long to do a Broadway-themed Carpool Karaoke, but perhaps they couldn’t get out to NYC to film one, or maybe it didn’t occur to “The Late Late Show” until Corden was tapped as the Tony Awards host. “Well, we thought we’ve got a really good idea here and we’d bring people and go, ‘So it’s really straightforward, it’s an hour of your time and we’re going to sing songs in the vehicle.’ And they mostly go, ‘Who is this?’ And we go, ‘It’s James Corden'”.
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The timing was no accident: the Tony Awards, hosted by Corden, will air this Sunday.
Stars including Adele, Justin Bieber, Stevie Wonder and Gwen Stefani have since taken part in Carpool Karaoke.
The 11-minute spot features the group riding around New York City, offering sing-along versions of Broadway songs from “Rent”, “Jersey Boys”, “Les Miserables” and – of course – “Hamilton”. As for Hamilton, that show has a record-breaking 16 nominations at this year’s Tony Awards: 2001’s The Producers and 2009’s Billy Elliot previously held the record with 15 nods each. No one wanted to do the Carpool Karaoke sketch. On his first drive, he invited Mariah Carey who nearly made the late-night host sing solo for the entire auto trip.
But when he approached artists no-one was interested, he told United States radio shock jock Howard Stern on Monday.
Audra, with six Tony Award wins under her belt, gave James some tips for presenting the show: “The audience just want to have a great time”. I’m talking, who’s the dudes who did Cotton Eye Joe?. They’re like “I’m not doing that”. Everyone. I mean I’m genuinely serious! “We tried to book it for two months”.
Speaking on SiriusXM, Corden talked about kick-starting the segment and recalled a time where he couldn’t even book “fifth rate” artists.
He told Stern she was a big fan of Carey and was looking to promote her then-Las Vegas show.
Can you say tres misérables? “I’ve been telling everyone this is an incredible bit”, he confessed. “We’ll just drive round and have a chat”.
“I went, ‘Oh, right”.
Watch all 11 minutes (can it be longer, please?) of Carpool Karaoke, below. To answer that question, we’d probably need to actually score tickets to “Hamilton“, but we’re honestly just glad Russell Crowe isn’t singing.
“To her credit, she got involved and it was wonderful”, he said of the now-famous launch to the segment. This year, he is not nervous due to the success of the show.
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Sure, it matters which shows get awards-but the real point of watching the Tonys is to see performances from the night’s nominated musicals, as well as whichever ones haven’t been nominated but do have deep enough pockets to fund a number of their own (hello there, Finding Neverland). Why? Later, they impressively took on the tongue-twisting “Guns and Ships”, originally sung by Daveed Diggs’ Marquis de Lafayette.
