Rise to Fame
A charity skit he filmed with George Michael for Comic Relief in 2011 eventually got him a CBS talk show. The path there was longer: he co-wrote Gavin & Stacey with Ruth Jones in his late twenties, won a BAFTA, then surprised Broadway by winning the Tony for Best Actor in a Play for One Man, Two Guvnors in 2012. CBS gave him The Late Late Show in 2015, but it was Carpool Karaoke, developed from that original George Michael charity skit, that gave the show its identity. The Adele segment pulled 42 million YouTube views in five days.
In the Spotlight
The Balthazar incident in October 2022 gave a name to something the internet had been building toward for years. Restaurant owner Keith McNally posted on Instagram banning him, calling him a 'tiny Cretin of a man' after he allegedly berated servers over an egg yolk omelet. His initial response to the New York Times that he hadn't done 'anything wrong, on any level' didn't help. He walked it back on air and the ban was lifted, but public opinion had curdled well before that. He left the show in April 2023 and the franchise ended entirely. His 2025 Broadway run in Art earned some of the best notices of his career.
Side Notes
Carpool Karaoke wasn't a TV concept first. He filmed it as a 2011 Comic Relief charity skit with George Michael in London. Getting Mariah Carey to do the first Late Late Show version required showing her that clip. He and Eddie Redmayne were classmates at stage school in High Wycombe. His son's middle name is McCartney (the Paul McCartney Carpool Karaoke segment was expanded to an hour and reportedly made him cry during filming). He owns a stake in Fulwell 73, the production company that spun Carpool Karaoke into a standalone Apple TV+ series.