James Corden has been labelled the "most difficult and obnoxious presenter" to work with by a former director of one of his popular panel shows. The actor and comedian, 44, came under fire from Craig Duncan, who directed an episode of Sky's A League of Their Own that Corden hosted.
James starred on the sporting panel show from 2010 up until 2019. The producer worked with James on one episode from season seven of the hit programme, where he directed a pre-recorded Masterchef style challenge.
Now, Craig has branded the presenter "difficult" to work with following their interactions on set. "The most difficult and obnoxious presenter I've ever worked with is James Corden," he told his YouTube followers on his channel Fudded, The Mirror reports.
Craig explained he had to direct James and co-stars Freddie Flintoff, Jamie Redknapp and Jack Whitehall in the challenge. The producer claimed he was asked if he could deal with 'difficult presenters' and was told to go to a rehearsal to 'witness James at work' before agreeing to film.
"They said 'How are you at working with difficult presenters?' I say, 'Oh right, ok. Well, I've filmed the Three Tenors before, and you can't get more of a prima donna than an opera singer'."
At the rehearsal, Craig claims James took issue with a script he had to read and branded the joke as "s**t" before asking it to be rewritten.
"It came to a point where he had to read from a card. It was kind of a joke in there, and he just looked at it like, 'That's not funny, that's not funny. It's s**t, we have to rewrite that'," Craig added.
"I don't know, maybe he was having a bad day or the writing's not up to scratch, but I definitely thought, 'man somebody wrote that, not nice to do that'.
"But television isn't for the faint-hearted and sometimes you have to take those knocks on the chin." Despite the rocky rehearsal, Craig decided to go ahead and direct the challenge but said things were tense on set as James only had limited time.
He claimed filming was going "really well" until right at the end when they had to announce the winner of the cooking contest.
Craig said he and the crew were working out how to best film the last segment to "save time" when James "piped up".
"We were working it out, when old buggerlugs pipes up: 'What the f**k is going on here? It's obvious what you do - you put a camera there, you put a camera there (...) It's so obvious how you shoot it, you're stupid'."
Craig claimed he told the presenter he was "absolutely right" to appease him. "I hope I never, ever work with [James] again," Craig added.
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