Broadway Stars Sing Carpool Karaoke

James Corden (top right, in red shirt) has carved out a niche for himself with Carpool Karaoke. The CBS “Late Late Show” host invites stars into his Range Rover and they drive around singing songs. It has become a wildly popular segment for Corden, who took over the late-night hosting duties from Craig Ferguson in March of last year.

“This is a fun gang!” — James Corden

On Monday night, Corden unveiled a new one to tout Sunday night’s upcoming 70th annual Tony Awards show, which Corden is hosting.

He starts out with “Hamilton” star Lin-Manuel Miranda — and Corden keeps up with Miranda word-for-word on the main song from the hit musical. (We hope he’s in a self-driving car: When Corden’s rapping he takes his hands off the wheel — a lot.)

Corden asks Miranda how he’s feeling about the Tonys.

“I had a show up for [the] Tonys — my first show was ‘In the Heights’ … We knew we needed to win stuff in order to run, so I was excited but nervous. ‘Hamilton’ is selling fine so I don’t feel that kind of pressure. With this it’s just like, ‘oh, we get to be in the building with all our friends from other shows.’ That’s the great thing about Broadway. We all work within the same eight blocks.”

They stop to pick up Audra McDonald, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Jane Krakowski.

“This is a fun gang!” says Corden. They proceed to sing tunes from “Les Miserables” and other Broadway classics. Their rendition of “Seasons of Love” from “Rent” will give you chills.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YshgmStEZh0″]

Corden asks the seasoned theater performers for advice about hosting the Tonys.

“It’s a long evening so just have fun. Belt out a few show tunes,” said McDonald.

“It’s the nicest audience you’ll ever perform for,” said Tyler Ferguson.

They end by all belting out “One Day More” from “Les Mis.” And we do mean belting out — complete with McDonald hitting the high note.

Before the debut of the Broadway karaoke video, Corden appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show Monday night and explained how the bit got started. It was a sketch Corden did for Britain’s Comic Relief charity, in which he picked up Wham!’s George Michael and drove around singing with him. Corden found the experience “joyful” and wanted to do it on the streets of Los Angeles. But Corden found that most recording artists said no — until Mariah Carey proved to be a sport and said OK.

After Carey’s video, which aired in March 2015, more famous guests were willing to take a chance, and now Carpool Karaoke is one of the most popular and successful segments in late-night television.

Oh, and yes, he actually does drive a car, but he has production vehicles in front of and behind him and he rarely goes over 20 miles an hour, executive producer Ben Winston told Vulture in January. And the cameras are so tiny they don’t obstruct his view.

Corden has since had fun driving around and crooning with Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, Chris Martin, and many others — but it will be hard to top the singing talent in this Broadway car.