Alicia Keys and John Legend are among the stars who will host the spin-off of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke.
The segment from James’s talk show is getting its own series.
Celebrity pairs including Alicia and John, Ariana Grande and Seth MacFarlane, and Blake Shelton and Chelsea Handler will be featured on the 16-episode series to be released weekly on Apple Music.
James, who will appear with Will Smith on one episode, said he was proud The Late Late Show has created a segment that works so well it will stand on its own.
“I’m incredibly proud we have a late night talk show that 18 months ago a majority of the room were going, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’” James told a meeting of the Television Critics Association.
The British star was a US TV newcomer when he took over as host of CBS’ Late Late Show in 2015, but he’d already won a 2012 Tony Award for Broadway’s One Man, Two Guvnors.
His karaoke segments, in which James drives while a pop star passenger joins him in song, has become a viral sensation.
Does he have advice to those who will take the wheel for the new series?
“This is only a waste of time if you don’t enjoy it,” he said. “That enjoyment, that joy, that sort of unbridled freedom of singing in a car, is the glue that holds it all together.”
Driving and singing aren’t an issue, he said. The rule is head in a straight line.
“I’d rather do it here than in London. That’s much harder,” he said.