Into the Woods with James Corden

IT had been quite the day. James Corden had welcomed into the world a daughter, Carey, a sister for brother Max. His wife, Julia, was asleep, all was right with the universe, so when an unknown number flashed up on his phone Corden thought what the heck, and answered.

It was Craig Ferguson, the Scots host of CBS's The Late Late Show, the job Corden will be taking on from March.

"He couldn't have been more lovely," says Corden. "He said, 'The truth is, buddy, whether you like it or not, there are only two people on the planet who know what it is like to come from Britain, move to America and do a late night talk show, and that's me and you. So if you ever need anything, any advice, I'm right here at the end of a phone'."

Before he takes up his interview desk duties, Corden, 36, can be seen in Into the Woods, the Rob Marshall-directed, Disney adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical. The Gavin & Stacey and The Wrong Mans star plays the Baker, with Meryl Streep as the Witch, Anna Kendrick as Cinderella, and Emily Blunt as the Baker's Wife.

It was seeing Tony Award-winning Corden in the stage play One Man, Two Guvnors that led Marshall to invite him to workshop the film. It was an audition in all but name, but Corden did not feel nervous because the film had yet to be green lit.

"At the end of the workshop I was packing up my rucksack and Rob came over to me, took me by the hand, and said, 'I just want you to know if we ever get this film made I am not going to make it without you.' I absolutely believed him because he is just not the sort of guy to throw stuff like that around. But deep in my stomach I thought ... I understand the constraints of trying to make a film. I know that as it gets to the business end of doing it Disney are going to go, 'Seriously Rob, who is this guy, let's cast someone actually famous'."

By now, courtesy of his stage and television work, that Late Late Show gig, and an OBE reportedly on the way in the New Year Honours, London-born Corden has made a name for himself in the UK and in America, one which Into the Woods can only bolster. The vocal talents of the cast did not surprise him, he says.

"I guess if there is anything I'm surprised by [it's] the narrow constraints in which lots of people are forced to work a lot of the time, in that you are really judged by the first two or three things you do in your career and therefore that is your trajectory for the rest of time. It almost sometimes becomes a lifelong struggle just to break those shackles off." He cites Matthew McConaughey, rom-com prince turned Oscar winning dramatic actor, as a case in point.

But Corden, as an actor/writer/chat show host/producer, would seem to prove that pigeonholing theory wrong. "I don't know," he says. "Sometimes I feel I wish I had a shot at doing parts like that, that don't tend to come your way because you might look a certain way or be a certain way."

Marshall, who previously directed Chicago, says whatever direction Corden heads in he has a "huge" career in front of him. It is one which is about to take a turn for left-field with The Late Late Show. Get it right, and he will have cracked America. Get it wrong ... well, let us not venture there. One gets the sense he is nervous enough.

"If anything, my doing the Late, Late Show will give me a lot more freedom to do other things in my career because I will have choice. But that's not the reason to do it. The truth is this. People seem to think that making films and acting is incredibly glamorous and brilliant. I can't stress enough how much of your day is spent in a caravan, in a car park. It couldn't be less glamorous."

What he learned from One Man, Two Guvnors is that he loved a day that had a focus. In that case it was a nightly performance, in The Late Late Show it will be a programme. "The thought of doing that on TV, in America, and giving it a shot ..." he trails off.

Working on a Disney blockbuster was a tad different from making the low budget Gavin and Stacey and The Wrong Mans. On those shows, jokes Corden, it's a big day if there are Bourbon biscuits on set. "It will spread like wildfire if some chocolate Hobnobs are around." What really brought the budget difference home was flying back from America.

"I was in first class, which I've never been before. Guess who I was in the plane with? Wills and Kate."

All was going smoothly until Corden somehow became attached to the royal party when leaving the plane. Going through the wrong door, he was stopped by security and re-directed. It could have been a scene from The Wrong Mans, in which Corden and fellow writer-actor Matthew Baynton play two council workers who find themselves caught up in international intrigue.

It makes for a good anecdote, one which might feature in Late Late Shows to come. As might his memories of his co-stars in Into the Woods, among them, this being a fairtytale-based yarn, several babies and a cow.

"I'm all right with the babies. I'm pretty good. The baby was never the issue, it was the cow. That cow was a bitch. You don't know what it is like to be in a scene where Meryl Streep is doing phenomenal acting [only for it] to be ruined by 'Moooo-ooo'."

The family are all packed and ready to head to the States. If he enjoys it, might he stay there?

"I can't see that happening. There's no sense in me or my wife feeling for a second that this is anything other than just a merry jaunt, an adventure that we'd rather regret doing than not doing."

He knows it is a punt, but he is up for it. "There is more chance it won't work than it will work. I'm 16 stone from High Wycombe. From what I can see from American network TV they've been trying to make people who look like me obsolete in television. There's no sense of me thinking this is it now, this will be my life. I just think we'll do it for a bit then come back and I'll try and be in plays."

The day we meet, his son, Max, has just had his last day, for now, in a British school. Dad made him a card to gee him up for the adventure ahead. There was no need. As it happened, the three-year-old was the one giving the pep talk.

"It will be fun dada," he said.

Out of the mouths of babes.

[itals] Into the Woods opens in cinemas on January 9