Craig Sugden/CBSCarpool Karaoke: When Corden Met McCartney, Live from Liverpool — the TV special featuring James Corden and Paul McCartney driving around the ex-Beatle’s hometown and performing in a pub — is up for five Emmys this year, and Corden himself is up for seven, five of which are related to that special. Corden tells Variety that for him, the biggest reward is how much McCartney personally liked the show.
“Every few weeks I’ll get a text from a friend saying, ‘Dude, I was just at Paul McCartney’s show, and he mentioned you,’” Corden tells Variety.
“It’s lovely that he would talk about it in such a way,” he adds. “Paul had not had a #1 album in America [since 1982], and he very kindly and publicly credits that segment as being an instrumental thing in that happening. But I also know that he feels very proud of it because it took a lot for him to open up in such a manner.”
But Corden reveals that Paul only wanted to open up so far.
“On the day of shooting…he said, ‘Listen, I know we’ve talked about this, but I don’t want to go back into my [old] house,'” Corden recalls.
“He said, ‘I just feel weird about it. I haven’t been in there in 50 years…all I ever do when I bring people to Liverpool is I drive up outside and I show them that house, and I show them where John lived.'”
And I said, ‘Look, Paul…If you don’t want to go in, we’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do…Nothing else matters other than you and me enjoying this.”
But when they got there, Corden recalls, “[Paul] goes, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ And it was glorious.'”
The Emmys air September 22 on Fox.
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