There’s a lot of stuff about Hollywood that’s fake. We tend to call it movie magic, but sometimes when people find out about a moment on TV or in the movie’s that’s been faked, it can cause a much bigger ripple than other times. Take James Corden’s popular segment “Carpool Karaoke,” which recently dumbfounded fans when it was revealed the driving in the segment is actually faked.
That is, someone is driving, just not James Corden. Thanks to a cool post on Twitter, the making of Justin Bieber and James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” revealed revealed James Corden and the celebrities that get into his vehicle are not really doing any driving and that the vehicle is attached to another to film the segment. Take a look.
To be honest, I’ve watched a bunch of these videos and always sort of assumed James Corden wasn’t driving, but not everyone really knew or understood what was going on before the tweet above blew up.
In fact, one Twitter user compared it to that time we found out Drew Seeley actually did Zac Efron’s singing as Troy Bolton in the first High School Musical movie, a fact I’ve always found weird given Efron has a serviceable singing voice and has sung in movies like Hairspray and more recently The Greatest Showman.
Some users don’t really care if the segment is fake, but they do have other priorities when it comes to “Carpool Karaoke.”
You’d be forgiven if you didn’t realize this was faked, as sometimes “Carpool Karaoke” has put effort into making it seem like celebrities such as Adam Levine are driving. However, one Twitter user noted that if people didn’t understand what was going on with “Carpool Karaoke” they really hadn’t been paying attention, using a screenshot from the Stevie Wonder segment to illustrate their point.
Still, if you’ve actually seen the Stevie Wonder “Carpool Karaoke” it does keep up the pretense of James Corden actually driving, despite the screenshot above. In the bit, Stevie Wonder gets into the driver’s seat and he and James Corden have a talk about whether or not he’s fit to drive. Then, Wonder makes fun of Corden’s accent before admitting that maybe he doesn’t have his driver’s license. So, as far as evidence goes, this is thin, given Steve Wonder is parked and not driving in the episode.
Another user shared a funny anecdote about what could theoretically happen to celebrities if the show was letting James Corden drive while trying to do all of the other stuff he needs to do to keep “Carpool Karaoke” rolling…
Still, I think the show does a pretty good job of keeping up the pretense, which is why a large number of people didn’t realize the rig the show has been using to make sure everything is safe.
At the end of the day, this isn’t the first and it won’t be the last little bit of Hollywood trickery that will likely trickle into your life. While you wait for another incident like this one, be sure to go ahead and destroy all your illusions by reading about what’s actually in the fake cocaine in movies. (Yup, that’s not real either.) Oh yeah, and Aquaman didn’t actually shoot underwater, in case that was super unclear. Just trying to help!
Now that all of our illusions have been properly shattered, we'll be on the lookout for more late night moments, particularly with this bit. To one day spot more fake “Carpool Karaoke” moments, you can tune in when The Late Late Show with James Corden airs late night on CBS, weeknights starting at 12:37 a.m. ET.
