James Corden announced recently that he would change the “Spill Your Guts” segment on “The Late Late Show,” which was previously accused of being “culturally offensive” because some of the “disgusting foods” it featured were dishes from Asian countries.
Corden made the announcement on “The Howard Stern Show,” telling the host that he and his team were responding to the backlash caused by the segment.
“We heard [about the backlash] and the next time we do that bit we absolutely won’t use any of those foods,” Corden told Stern, according to Yahoo! Entertainment. “Our show is a show about joy and light and love. We don’t want to make a show that will upset anybody.”
“We completely understand,” he said of the backlash, adding “I don’t know when we’re going to do that bit again.”
“When we do we absolutely won’t use any foods [that offend],” he added.
“It’s not for us to determine [why] somebody’s upset or hurt about something. That’s not for us to decide. All we can do is go: Alright, we get it. We hear you. We won’t do that,” Corden said.
Stern, however, had been against the backlash to the segment, telling Corden that he shouldn’t give in to the complaints.
“It couldn’t be a more harmless bit”, Stern said. “Outta the blue, I guess some group of people are offended by this because you are serving foods that are popular in their culture — which I don’t know where culture this is, but what the f—. Who the hell is eating this s— — like 3,000-year-old eggs and all this horrible stuff.”
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Corden came under fire earlier this month after doing the “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts” segment with Jimmy Kimmel. After the segment aired, a TikTok user voiced her concerns with program in a viral video.
“The TikTok user, whose real name is Kim Saira of California, shared a clip of Jimmy Kimmel’s appearance on the 42-year-old’s show in which he had to choose between a bull penis, a thousand-year-old egg, pig blood curd, and a balut,” Fox News reported at the time. “‘Wow it all looks so terrible,’ Kimmel reacted, to which Corden laughs and calls the smell of the foods ‘really disgusting’ and ‘horrific.’”
After getting half a million views on her post, Saira started a Change.org petition claiming Corden’s segment “encourages anti-Asian racism.”
“James Corden’s The Late Late show features a segment called ‘Spill Your Guts,’ where guests either have to answer difficult questions he gives them, or eat the foods that are presented to them. The foods that are presented are meant to be ‘gross,’ as they are supposed to encourage the guest to answer his questions instead,” Saira wrote. “However, many of the foods that he presents to his guests are actually from different Asian cultures. He’s presented foods such as balut, century-old eggs, and chicken feet, and which are often regularly eaten by Asian people.”
“During these segments, he’s openly called these foods ‘really disgusting,’ and ‘horrific.’ In the wake of the constant Asian hate crimes that have continuously been occurring, not only is this segment incredibly culturally offensive and insensitive, but it also encourages anti-Asian racism,” the petition continued. “So many Asian Americans are consistently bullied and mocked for their native foods, and this segment amplifies and encourages it.”
Saira’s petition has gained more than 45,500 signatures since it was posted. In a statement to Yahoo!, Saira said Corden’s show didn’t reach out to her about the backlash and complained that the host didn’t offer an actual apology for the segment.
“‘The Late Late Show’ did not reach out to me about this statement,” Saira told the outlet. “After listening to what he said, to be completely honest with you, I’m really disappointed in this statement, which in my opinion, isn’t an apology.”
“In my petition, I specifically asked for [Corden] to publicly apologize on his show, and the reason why I was really specific about that was because I think that it is imperative for his hundreds of thousands of viewers to understand the harm that mocking these foods, rooted in Asian cultures, has on Asian people who still eat them. Besides that, I still think he should be donating to Asian organizations as well,” Saira continued.