James Corden explains how Hillary Clinton saved his Grammys sketch

The Grammys audience was shocked to see Hillary Clinton pop up as the final participant to James Corden’s Fire and Fury sketch, and, on some level, so was Corden himself. As the host explained on The Late Late Show Monday night, he had to lie his way through the filming process because he wasn’t sure if his wild card player would agree to appear.

“We had the idea to do that about 11 days ago,” he said. “We were thinking about different [ideas]. ‘Oh, that’s quite a good idea. But we can only do it if Hillary Clinton is the last person to read. Without that we don’t know what to do.’”

The sketch saw John Legend, Cardi B, Cher, DJ Khaled, and Snoop Dogg reading excerpts from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House — the same book that called the president’s mental stability into question, that included damning quotes from former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and that claimed Trump had a nightly ritual with a cheeseburger.

All the celebs had agreed to participate under the assumption Clinton was also involved. Though, at the time, that wasn’t guaranteed.

“We’d emailed [Clinton’s] people and we had not heard anything, but we had to get on and shoot it,” Corden went on. “So, basically, we just lied to everyone. We told Cher, ‘Oh, Hillary’s doing it.’

DJ Khaled, Snoop, Cardi B., they all said yes because they thought that Hillary was doing it and we had no idea whether Hillary would do it or not. We’d shot all the parts without her being there.”

Fortunately for Corden, Clinton ultimately said yes. “That is not a call I want to make to Cher,” he joked.

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• February 2 2018
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