James Corden is facing a further backlash after promising to make changes to a “racist” food segment on his US chat show.
More than 45,000 people have signed the petition calling to discontinue a recurring segment on Corden’s The Late Late Show that allegedly “encourages racism”.
In the segment, entitled “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts”, celebrity guests are made to eat foods that Corden regularly describes as “horrific” and “disgusting”. Social media personality Kim Saira started the petition after noticing that some of the foods described as “disgusting” included specific Asian delicacies.
While appearing on Howard Stern’s US radio show, Corden said that he and his team had been made aware of Saira’s campaign, saying: “The next time we do that bit we absolutely won’t involve or use any of those foods … Our show is a show about joy and light and love, we don’t want to make a show to upset anybody.”
Saira, however, has now condemned Corden’s comments and suggested that he did not actually apologise for the segment.
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In an email to Today, Saira wrote that she is “really disappointed” in Corden’s statement, and that she had only found out about it via Today weeks after the TV host’s appearance on The Howard Stern Show.
“In my petition, I have specifically asked for James Corden to publicly apologise on his show, and the reason why I was really specific about that was because I think that it is imperative for his hundreds of thousands of viewers to understand the harm that mocking these foods, rooted in Asian cultures, has on Asian people who still eat them,” she wrote.
While Corden did not tell Stern how the segment will be changed moving forward, he suggested that “disgusting” foods would be chosen due to their association with the celebrity guest appearing in the segment.
“In the same way that when we played it with [Vogue editor] Anna Wintour, we gave her a pizza covered in cheeseburgers,” Corden said.
The Independent has contacted CBS Television for comment.
