Every now and then, talk show hosts sit on each other’s TV couches, and last night, The Late Late Show host James Corden swung by Jimmy Kimmel Live! to talk about a number of things, including his recent “Carpool Karaoke” segment with Kanye West, which featured his massive Sunday Service choir and took place in a plane.
Calling Kanye a “complex fellow,” Corden said, “This was actually the third time that we had tried to do a sort of ‘Carpool Karaoke’ with Kanye. The first time he agreed and he canceled a few days later, and [I was like], ‘Oh that’s a shame, but it’s fine.’ The second time that Kanye canceled ‘Carpool Karaoke’ was so late in the day that I was driving up his road in the car, with all the cameras. And [I] got this phone call saying it’s been canceled, and I literally… I think I basically turned around outside his house, back to the studio.”
Corden then confirmed with Kimmel that Kanye had texted both of them at around the same time, asking to do something with the Sunday Service choir on their shows. He asked Corden if he could do a ‘Carpool Karaoke’ segment with the choir “on a bus or a truck in LA.” Corden agreed, but Kanye wanted a quick turnaround that would be hard to pull off for a variety of reasons.
Corden then spoke about the morning the shoot was supposed to happen, saying, “Wednesday morning [at] 11 a.m., someone sends an email saying it’s not going to happen today. We were like, ‘Yeah, no sh*t it’s not going to happen today.’ Then, and this is where he’s brilliant, […] he just then goes, ‘I want to do it on an airplane.’ And we go, ‘Great, yeah, why not? Let’s do it on a spaceship, that’d be great.’ To his credit, he and his team get the plane.”
Even on the day of the shoot, though, Corden, who had been burned before, was not confident it was going to actually happen. Once he was in it, though, he said the experience was moving: “Being on that plane, surrounded by that choir, sitting with him, and he was in a great place and in the best mood… I will never ever forget what that choir sounded like on that airplane. It was an astonishing thing and I really thought, this is a once in a lifetime thing that I’ll never ever forget. It was an incredible moment.”
Kimmel then joked, “Did you turn your life over to Jesus,” to which Corden responded, “You know what? I was close!”
Watch the interview above.
