James Corden swears he ‘wasn’t fired’ from ‘The Late Late Show’

It’s too late to correct the misconception.  

James Corden, 45, who hosted CBS’ “The Late Late Show” for an eight-year run from 2015 to 2023, appeared on Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to talk about his new life back in London. 

“No one believes that I wasn’t fired. I’ll be in a pub or something and people will be like, ‘Oh yeah …’ They’ll be like, ‘So why’d you come back?’” he said, referring to moving from Los Angeles back across the pond to the UK.

“And I’ll be like, ‘Oh, ’cause Max has finished sixth grade and we really wanted him to have a relationship with his grandparents,’” he said. 

“And people will honestly be like, ‘You don’t have to give me that bulls–t. It’s fine, mate. If you got fired, you got fired.’”

Corden moved his family — wife Julia Carey and kids Max, 13, Carey, 9, and Charlotte, 6 — from Los Angeles back to London after the end of his CBS show in April 2023. 

At the time that he announced his departure in April 2022, Corden said, “It’s been it’s a really hard decision to leave because I’m so immensely proud of the show … I always thought I’d do it for five years and then leave and then I stayed on. I’ve really been thinking about it for a long time, thinking whether there might be one more adventure.”

During an appearance on “Today” in January, he said about his departure, “It really had nothing to do with not enjoying the show anymore. It was the single greatest time I’m pretty certain I’ll ever have in my working life.”

He further explained: “But my son was 3 when we moved [to America], my daughter was 12 weeks. When we left, he was 12, my daughter was 8, and our younger daughter — who is an American, and we treat her as such … No, really for us, it was the notion that it was time. We wanted them to know their grandparents. And with my son finishing sixth grade, it was just an absolute pull to go home, and root that period of their lives in — we wanted them to know Britain, and their extended family.”

Corden told Jimmy Kimmel that nobody in Britain believes leaving “The Late Late Show” was his choice because “nobody thinks you would ever leave what is — let’s be honest — a cushy existence. You don’t understand how institutionalized you are. It’s extraordinary.” 

“But it’s like, you’re institutionalized in a world where you get a standing ovation at the end of every day. And that is — what I’ve realized — is it’s really bad for you,” he said. 

When Kimmel suggested that Corden get a letter from CBS to prove that he wasn’t fired, the latter said, “I would, except they don’t know what CBS is. So they’ll go, ‘Well, that’s not a real thing.’ And then I have to tell them what the show was, and they’ll go, ‘Hang on, it was on at 12:30 at night? That’s a ridiculous time to put a TV show on.’”

Since he left CBS, Corden’s latest gig is his SiriusXM show “This Life of Mine,” in which he interviews celebs such as Jeremy Renner, David Beckham and Kim Kardashian.