James Corden’s office, at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, is crammed full of showbiz clutter—dog-eared scripts, award-show trophies, a framed thank-you note from a former first lady. But there’s one small item sitting atop a pile of magazines on a coffee table that Corden couldn’t get through the day without, a simple artifact that plays a key role in the Zen order of his work-life philosophy.
“I try to carve out six or seven minutes of silence twice a day, which is where this thing comes in handy,” he says, picking up a little black sleep mask, the kind airlines give away in first class. “Some people would call it meditating. But I don’t do breathing exercises. I don’t ‘go’ anywhere in particular. I just do this”—he slips on the mask for a few seconds and assumes a blissfully blank expression—”and then when I’m done, it’s like, restart!”
Wearing a cardigan and jeans and slouching on his office sofa on a cool September morning, the 39-year-old British stage actor turned talk-show host looks like he could sorely use a seven-minute nap. He was up past midnight last night—his preferred bedtime is 8:45 p.m.—in a Silver Lake studio recording a song for Peter Rabbit, Sony’s upcoming animated feature in which he voices the cotton-tailed garden dweller of British children’s literature. (“We all grew up reading the books in England,” he notes. “The character is sacred.”) He’s been shuttling to the Warner Bros. lot as well, for postproduction work on next summer’s Ocean’s 8, in which he’ll costar as an insurance investigator on the trail of thieves played by Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, and Anne Hathaway. He’s gearing up to host the Grammys this winter for the second year in a row. (Corden is a celebrated master of ceremonies: The Tony Awards he hosted in 2016 won an Emmy.) Then there are his duties as a producer at Fulwell 73, the production company he runs with best friend and business partner Ben Winston. Fulwell rents offices right down the hall, where, among many other things, it’s creating serialized spin-offs of Corden’s late-night bits, such as “Carpool Karaoke” for Apple Music and “Drop the Mic” for TBS, plus a new reality show about pro soccer for YouTube, a platform where Corden has one of the fastest-growing channels, with 12 million subscribers and counting.
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Then there’s his day job: He’s the bloke behind the desk of CBS’s The Late Late Show, which shoots four afternoons a week on a soundstage next door to his office.
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