Member-only story
James Corden was fine in The Prom, and the internet won’t convince me otherwise
The internet hates James Corden.
Take this 2017 Reddit thread, which simply asks “Why do people hate James Corden so much?” Or this 2018 piece from LadBible, in which writer Jess Hardiman explains “how James Corden went from everyone’s favourite funnyman to one of the world’s most hated.” Or Angus Harrison’s guide for Americans “who don’t like James Corden.”
Precisely why people hate James Corden is a bit like why people don’t like dark chocolate, or John Lewis Christmas adverts: it pretends to be lovely but is actually bitter and exploitative, it’s the same schtick year after year, it’s fattening or at least saccharine, and some can’t really tell you why — there’s just something distasteful about it. It’s a nebulous but seemingly universal truth.
So, not surprisingly, the internet is in agreement that his performance in the recently released Ryan Murphy musical The Prom is terrible. The Telegraph’s film critic Tim Robey called the performance “gayface” (a pun on blackface, for those who, like me, know “gayface” as being queer slang for a face that looks decidedly homosexual), while former X Factor novelty act Jedward have blasted Corden for “offensively playing every gay stereotype” in the film, as if they haven’t made a career out of doing just that.
