Paul McCartney didn’t want to visit childhood Liverpool home on Carpool Karaoke
Late night host James Corden explained that the Beatle had gotten “cold feet” multiple times before he finally said yes.
Image: Rob Verhorst / Getty Images
Getting Paul McCartney to visit his childhood home in Liverpool for Carpool Karaoke was apparently a lot harder than it looked.
Late Late Show host James Corden explained that while the Beatle had initially given the green light, he flip-flopped on his decision multiple times before the actual day.
“He said, ‘I’m in, I’ll do it, I can’t wait,’” Corden recalled. “About a month later, the message came through to us that he’d canceled, he didn’t want to do it. He’d got cold feet for some reason. Then he was back in again two weeks later.”
“[A]bout eight or nine days before we were due to fly to Liverpool to do it, it was one of those nights where I woke up around 1 a.m. … and there was an email saying, ‘Look, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to write this — Paul has changed his mind. He just feels this is the wrong sort of thing for him right now. He’d still like to do it one day.’”
In response, Corden sent McCartney an email calling his uncertainty “unacceptable”, explaining that the team had poured time and money into preparing the segment, and that his indecision was costing the show.
“I just wrote him an email saying, ‘I think that this is unacceptable,” he said. “I completely respect your decision not to do it, but I need you to understand what the knock-on effect is for our show.”
“And I said ‘Paul, I guarantee you, I promise you, that it will be great. And the reason it will be great is that you are Paul McCartney.’”
Corden’s persistence eventually paid off for the next day, McCartney gave the segment the go ahead again. And while one would’ve thought that that was the end of things… on the morning of the shoot, the Beatle once again pulled Corden aside to discuss a segment where he’d enter his original house in his native Liverpool.
“He said, ‘I don’t want to go into my house. He said I haven’t been there since I left,'” Corden recalled. “‘I feel uncomfortable with it. I just don’t want to do it.’ And I went, ‘Paul your only day’s work today is to have a great time. That’s all that’s expected of you is to have a blast. And if you have a great time, this is going to work so don’t stress about anything.'”
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