Why James Corden Is The Best Late Night Host Of The Moment

The day of the Orlando shootings, while the country was still coming to grips with the size and scope and horror of it all, there was a show that had to go on. The Tony Awards were happening that night, and CBS’ late-night star James Corden was set to be the host. And as the show came on the air, Corden stood with the theater community seated behind him and addressed the tragedy:

As a Tonys host, Corden was a no-brainer of a choice for CBS. He’s their bright, shiny new jewel in late night and he’s a bona fide Tony-winning Broadway performer. He might just keep hosting every year, like Johnny Carson at the Oscars. He was certainly the right man for the job this year, really coming through on his promise to offer the Tonys audience — an audience who was most certainly going through it that day — some fun and frivolity.

Fun and frivolity are what characterize Corden as a late-night host too. His Late Late Show has broken out to the degree it has on the back of segments like Carpool Karaoke which epitomizes Corden’s approach to dealing with celebrities: he’s friendly, accomodating, and fun. How calculated this approach is can’t be known. Certainly, the success of Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show has to have been instructive. Fallon’s show is characterized by the games he’ll play with celebrity guests. The interviews aren’t hard-hitting, the patter is excessively friendly, and it all leads to Susan Sarandon playing beer pong or something.

That Corden and Fallon have jumped onto this style has set them decidedly apart from a late-night format that had been around for decades. Of course, the comedy partisans who bemoan this particular flavor of late night — a dissent handily summed up by a Conan writer’s Twitter rant that claimed that Fallon’s brand of comedy was for the “popular kids” — are probably remembering David Letterman far more clearly than they’re remembering, say, the far more genial Johnny Carson.

The reality, however, is that the current state of late night television isn’t that much different from the current state of all television: the glut and diversity of options means that everybody has moved into an ever-narrower lane. Samantha Bee, John Oliver, and Trevor Noah have staked out the political territory. Conan is busy hanging on with all ten fingertips to the old style of late night. Seth Meyers is treading water, doing Weekend Update-adjacent stuff long enough to … I guess wait Lorne Michaels out at SNL? Stephen Colbert is still trying to figure out what he wants his show to be. And James Corden is showing America a good time. In the midst of Trump, of Orlando, of zika mosquitos and terrible headlines every day. What Corden showed at the Tony Awards is a good reminder of why he’s appealing to audiences the rest of the year as well. He’s an open-hearted guy with a theater-kid’s need to entertain. Carpool Karaoke might make your skin crawl, but it’s not hard to understand why people are looking to that kind of good time in late night.