Ricky Gervais has said James Corden was “horrified” after telling one of his jokes on The Late Late Show.
During an October episode, the host gave a monologue addressing Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and told a gag which viewers noted was remarkably similar to one from Gervais’s 2018 stand-up show Humanity.
In the joke, Corden says: “When you see Elon Musk talk about Twitter he does this thing where he goes, ‘Well, it’s the town square’.
“But it isn’t. Because if someone puts up a poster in a town square that says ‘guitar lessons available’, you don’t get people in the town going, ‘I don’t want to play the guitar! I want to play the piano, you piece of s**t!’
“Well that sign wasn’t for you, it was for someone else. You don’t have to get mad about all of it!”
The 44-year-old was met with backlash following the episode and later claimed the joke was copied “inadvertently” without realising where it originated.
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— Play ▷ tv PS5 Switch Games Movies (@PlayGamesMovies) November 1, 2022
Town Square Noticeboard:
🎸 GUITAR LESSONS 😂 @rickygervais @JKCorden @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/2iuKl4oqlt
Responding to the accusations at the time, he tweeted from The Late Late Show account: “Inadvertently told a brilliant Ricky Gervais joke on the show last night, obviously not knowing it came from him.
“It’s brilliant, because it’s a Ricky Gervais joke. You can watch all Ricky’s excellent specials on Netflix. J x”.
Gervais initially drew attention to the joke’s similarities in a now-deleted Twitter post and has since admitted that he removed the tweet because he “felt sorry” for the Gavin & Stacey actor.
Following the furore, the 61-year-old now revealed that Corden contacted him directly over the situation.
Speaking on the Headliners podcast, he said: “He did. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it’.
“I said, ‘if your writers were in the back of the room when I was warming up and you got it out there before I did it on Netflix…’, but whatever you think of James Corden there is no way he knowingly ripped off my joke and thought he’d get away with it.”
The After Life star explained that he has no regrets over how he reacted to the situation online and explained that he “thought it was funny”.
He added: “I didn’t know how it had happened. And I thought it was funny. I thought it was absurd that it was such an obvious rip-off.
Inadvertently told a brilliant Ricky Gervais joke on the show last night, obviously not knowing it came from him. It’s brilliant, because it’s a Ricky Gervais joke. You can watch all Ricky’s excellent specials on Netflix. J x
— The Late Late Show with James Corden (@latelateshow) November 1, 2022
“But again, I don’t know how he got to it because the writer must have walked him through and said, ‘Do this and do that’.
“Or he saw it five years ago and completely forgot about it and thought he’d made it up. That can happen as well.
“There are some plagiarists but a lot of it is genuinely accidental. So that is clearly my routine, but I don’t think he came up with it at all. I think a writer pitched that to him and didn’t tell him it was mine, or the writer forgot.”
Gervais also said that the late-night host was “horrified” over the mix-up and once again dismissed the idea that Corden knowingly stole the joke for his monologue.
The TV star continued: “I don’t know. I want to be fair. But what I don’t believe is James Corden watched that and thought ‘I can just rip that off’. There’s just no way.
“There is no way James Corden watched that and thought ‘I can get away with this’.
“It was the biggest special of the year. There is no way he thought ‘I can rip him off’. He was horrified. No chance.”
