On an episode of The Late Late Show on Monday, Oct 24, 2022, James Corden finally addressed the Balthazar situation with his audience.
About the incident, Corden remarks, “We sit down, we ordered, and my wife explained that she has a serious food allergy, right? So when everybody’s meals came, my wife was given the food that she was allergic to. But she hadn’t taken a bite of it or anything, all was good. As her meal came wrong to the table the third time, in the heat of the moment, I made — I made a sarcastic, rude comment about cooking it myself. And it is a comment I deeply regret.”
Everyone has a bad day, a bad moment, and I’m sure it sucks to have these moments haunt you. These bad moments probably haunt celebrities more than the average person, but if you’ve been following the whole situation, there is something fishy about it.
I’ve moved past being a part of cancel culture, but there’s a part of me that thinks that Corden hasn’t completely learned from this situation like people should when these embarrassing moments arise. Here’s the breakdown of the situation for why that is.
The ‘tiny cretin’ was Banned From Balthazar
On Oct 17th, 2022, Keith McNally, the restauranteur who owns Balthazar, released a statement on Instagram saying that Corden has been, “the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago.”
The post details two incidents where Corden had come in to dine at the restaurant that led to McNally banning Corden from the restaurant, and they are not memories that McNally finds to be funny at all. In the first incident, Corden finished his meal before showing that there had been a hair in his food. Even though the manager was apologetic, Corden demanded a round of drinks and for all the drinks up to that point to be comped, threatening to leave a poor Yelp review over the matter.
The second incident that McNally describes includes Corden yelling at a server after Corden’s wife had received a flaw with her order. The first time, the meal had been sent back as a result of some egg white being mixed in with the egg yolk. The second time, Corden’s wife received home fries instead of the salad that she originally ordered. This is what caused Corden to then yell at the server: “You can’t do your job! You can’t do your job! Maybe I should go into the kitchen and cook the omelet myself!” Corden was offered promo champagne glasses, it seems like it was offered as his last drink in the establishment.
The New York Times Interview That Should Have Been a Minute
Before McNally stirred the internet, Corden had an interview scheduled with The New York Times to promote his coming series, Mammals and it might be surprising that Corden thinks that he is above this situation. When the interviewer asked if he wanted to cancel due to the recent negative press, Corden said, “I haven’t done anything wrong, on any level. So why would I ever cancel this? I was there. I get it. I feel so zen about the whole thing. Because I think it’s so silly. I just think it’s beneath all of us. It’s beneath you. It’s certainly beneath your publication.”
It’s strange, because Corden didn’t think he was above it when he called McNally to apologize for the whole situation. And while I don’t think Corden would show up at Balthazar again, the ban on him has been lifted. I can’t help but think that he’s only going to act courteously out of fear of having this happen to him again, and not necessarily because he learned from this situation.
Corden was on my mind the other night when my boyfriend and I ordered a late-night order of UberEats. Our food came, and mine was incorrect. It was late into the night, so I understood that people make mistakes, so I didn’t tell the app that there was stuff missing from my meal, but I did leave a comment about it so that they knew.
I think that sometimes I worry about complaining when things are wrong because I don’t want to be pegged as a “Karen.” At the same time, I think there is a fine line between at least expecting that you are getting what you pay for and being rude about it. I said something because I didn’t get what I paid for. Corden took it to another level and criticized the ability of people in the service industry for making a mistake at varying decibels.
McNally Lifts Ban
Good thing McNally isn’t in the business of holding grudges, because he lifted the ban as soon as Corden called to apologize. Then, Corden made a live apology on The Late Late Show. It was the apology included at the beginning of this article and Corden continues the thought, but it seems to be without too much remorse: “Because I didn’t shout or scream, like, I didn’t get up out of my seat, I didn’t call anyone names or use derogatory language, I’ve been walking around thinking that I hadn’t done anything wrong, right? But the truth is, I have. I made a rude comment, and it was wrong. It was an unnecessary comment. It was ungracious to the server.” Apparently, the British way is to keep calm and carry on about things, but even in his 40s, Corden needed his dad to tell him that he should talk about this whole situation.
While I understand McNally forgiving Corden, as a person I don’t think I will ever forget this incident. In my mind, Corden has shown the world who he is. The true person is shown through the decisions that are made when there is no one watching. However, Corden showed who he was to people he thought were below him, and not just once. Corden tried to justify one incident, McNally detailed two in the original post, but McNally also said that Corden had been an abusive customer since Balthazar opened 25 years ago. If it had only happened once, I would call it an odd occurrence, but because it happened twice, I can’t help but think it’s a pattern in personality.
Maybe it’s easy to criticize on the outside, as a normal person who doesn’t have people messaging me about all the times I wasn’t so great. That’s probably why I’m so mindful of how I treat people these days: because there is always something going on. Perhaps Corden can serve as a reminder to society to have a little bit of empathy.