It seems James Corden’s apology for his Late Late Show segment “Spill Your Guts” is still not being received well by those who called out the comedian in the first place. Corden was first put on blast by Tiktoker Kim Saira for showing an insensitivity toward Asian cultures in his segment by referring to certain dishes indigenous to various cultures as “gross.” “They’re calling Asian food disgusting on live TV,” Saira said in her original June 7 TikTok post. “Huh. This is literally racist. this is so disrespectful wtf.”
“I noticed that one of the foods that he presented to someone was balut (a fertilized duck egg that is boiled and eaten from the shell), and balut is like, very specific to Filipino culture,” Saira told Today. “It’s a food that I have been eating whenever I go to the Philippines with my grandma and my cousins, so it’s a very sentimental food to me, and I noticed that he was presenting it to a guest and calling it gross.”
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She added: “I was just so confused and I feel like it was a moment of me just being like, ‘Oh my gosh, like, this is my culture. I don’t understand why he’s making fun of it?’” Saira’s outrage was the impetus behind a change.org petition to get the segment taken off the show entirely. It currently sits with 44,000 signatures. “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,” she wrote in the petition’s description. “So many Asian Americans are consistently bullied and mocked for their native foods, and this segment amplifies and encourages it.”
Corden addressed the movement and petition on the June 16 episode of The Howard Stern Show. “We heard that story, and the next time we do that bit we absolutely won’t involve or use any of those foods,” Corden said. “As you said at the start, our show is a show about joy and light and love. We don’t want to make a show to upset anybody.” Corden didn’t give a straight play-by-play plan on how the segment would be changed but assured fans that they would see a difference in the future. “You know, look,” he said, “In the same way that when we played it with Anna Wintour, we gave her a pizza covered in cheeseburgers. Do you know what I mean?”
Saira was made aware of Corden’s response, but shares that his answer didn’t strike the right note with her. “The Late Late Show did not reach out to me about this statement, I actually found out from another news source I was interviewing with,” she said in an email to Today. “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 have specifically asked for James 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. I’m still looking forward to whether he will address this publicly and apologize.”
