Terence Patrick/@terencepatrick ©2019 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.(LOS ANGELES) — James Corden shed a little more light on his last minute eye surgery that caused him to cancel remote tapings of CBS’s The Late Late Show, and why he didn’t drive the car while filming Justin Bieber’s Carpool Karaoke.
During an appearance on Wednesday’s The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Corden explained that he injured his eye years ago while performing in a play in New York. “I had to go and see a doctor. He gave me some things and he said, ‘Look, over some time, it will heal.’ And it did,” he recalls.
“About a year ago it flared up again — this sort of little scratch on my eyeball,” continued Corden. “I’d been seeing doctors a lot.”
“Three weeks ago I woke up and I couldn’t open my eye,” he continued. After struggling to find his phone and Advil, he reached out to his doctor who, “took one look at my eye and he said, ‘We’re going to operate on it now,'” recalled the late night host.
“I said, ‘But I’ve got a show at 5 p.m.’ And he said, ‘No you don’t.’ He said, ‘You don’t have a show — until the earliest — next week. You’ve got to do this right now.'”
As for being called out online for not driving during his Carpool Karaoke segment with Bieber, Corden explained, ”The reason I didn’t drive that day was because my eye was really hurting and we were worried that it wouldn’t be safe.”
Corden says he’s excited about returning to hosting The Late Late Show with an audience, but it’s be a while before he’s singing in the car with anybody.
“We can’t really think of a remote way to do it. It really does rely on two people being in close proximity.”
By George Costantino
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