James Corden's Comments on Restaurant Incident May Have Made Things Worse With Owner
Restaurant owner Keith McNally was not moved by James Corden's apology for his allegedly cruel behavior in a New York City restaurant. McNally own's the upscale restaurant Balthazar, and last week he made a post on Instagram claiming Corden had repeatedly abused his staff. After Corden gave an interview with The New York Times disputing that post, McNally seemed to grow angrier than ever.
For those catching up, McNally shared two accounts of Corden's alleged mistreatment of restaurant staff on Instagram last week, and commenters amassed many other rumors that have built up over the years to go with it. On Friday, Corden responded in a statement to the press where he said that he hadn't "done anything wrong, on any level" when it came to McNally. Not long after, McNally made his third Instagram post in this debacle, with a prolonged caption that started with: "STORM IN A RESTAURANT TEACUP."
"I've no wish to kick a man when he's down," McNally went on. "Especially one who's worth $100 million, but when James Corden said in yesterday's NY Times that he hadn't done 'anything wrong, on any level,' was he joking? Or was he denying being abusive to my servers? Whatever Corden meant, his implication was clear: he didn't do it. Although I didn't witness the incident, lots of my restaurant's floor staff did. They had nothing to gain by lying. Corden did."
McNally went on to both condemn Corden and praise him. He called him a "supremely talented actor," but the quipped that he has a relatively small fan base. He wrote that he wanted Corden to at least admit that he was rude to the servers at his restaurant, but concluded: "If he goes one step further and apologizes to the 2 servers he insulted, I'll let him eat for free at Balthazar for the next 10 years."
McNally's first post on this subject described two incidents that were reported to him by his restaurant staff. In one, he said that Corden found a hair in his food and immediately began making demands of the manager, threatening to ruin the restaurant's publicity with his fame if he didn't get free drinks. In the second, Corden allegedly screamed at a waiter after his wife's meal was served with the wrong side item.
McNally's second post said that he had just gotten a phone call from Corden who had apologized, but that didn't seem to match the tone Corden took on Friday. He told the Times that the whole ordeal was "silly," adding: "I just think it's beneath all of us. It's beneath you. It's certainly beneath your publication."
Corden also told the Times that he would probably address this controversy on Monday night's episode of The Late Late Show. It begins at 12:35 a.m. ET on CBS, for those interested.