James Corden’s “Spill Your Guts” segment on The Late Late Show is getting a major update following a petition that draws attention to its offensiveness.
The recurring segment “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts” features celebrity guest stars from Justin Bieber to the Jonas Brothers either spilling answers to Corden’s most jaw-dropping questions or filling themselves up with unique foods from around the world as “disgusting” dares. But Filipina and Chinese activist Kim Saira brought it to the world’s attention that certain Asian delicacies — including balut, a fertilized duck egg dish from the Philippines — shouldn’t be labeled “disgusting,” in a viral TikTok video on June 7.
Saira later started a Change.org petition, which currently has more than 45,000 signatures, asking Corden to remove or completely change the controversial segment, formally apologize on The Late Late Show, and donate funds to local organizations supporting Asian-owned restaurants and businesses. “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. So many Asian Americans are consistently bullied and mocked for their native foods, and this segment amplifies and encourages it,” she wrote underneath the petition.
Corden sat in the hot seat on The Howard Stern Show on June 16 to address the petition and revisions he’ll be making to “Spill Your Guts.” “We heard that story, and the next time we do that bit, we absolutely won’t involve or use any of those foods,” the 42-year-old late-night talk show host said. “Our show is a show about joy and light and love, we don’t want to make a show to upset anybody. 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?”
Corden continued: “We completely understand. It’s not for us to determine whether somebody’s upset or hurt about something … all we can do is go, ‘All right, we get it, we won’t do that.’”
Other musicians who’ve been featured on “Spill Your Guts” include Shawn Mendes, Harry Styles (during his Late Late Show guest host gig while interviewing ex Kendall Jenner), Cher, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, and Charlie Puth. In 2019, Corden sat down with Stern in-person at his SiriusXM studio to describe the foods as “not odd.”
“I said, ‘Look, all of these things are delicacies around the world,’” he recalls of his conversation with Cher before her segment ran in June 2018. “They’re just odd to us. They’re not odd. And a lot of it doesn’t taste bad. It really doesn’t. It’s just your psyche of something being new.”
But Saira, who hosted a #CancelSpillYourGuts event at the CBS lot where The Late Late Show is filmed last Thursday, expressed her disdain for Corden’s statement and frustration toward the host for not airing the statement on The Late Late Show as she specifically requested in her petition.
“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 the Today show. “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.”
