James Corden has walked back his apology to the owner of New York City restaurant Balthazar over claims he was abusive towards the venue’s staff.
“I haven’t done anything wrong, on any level,” said The Late Late Show host in an interview with The New York Times. “So why would I ever cancel this? I was there. I get it. I feel so Zen about the whole thing. Because I think it’s so silly. I just think it’s beneath all of us. It’s beneath you. It’s certainly beneath your publication.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he made a comment about a customer at the Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where the interview was conducted. “Happens every day,” he said about the woman, who had apparently been complaining about the way eggs were served at the restaurant. “It’s happening in 55,000 restaurants as we speak. It’s always about eggs. ... Can you imagine now, if we just blasted her on Twitter? Would that be fair? This is my point. It’s insane.”
In Balthazar owner Keith McNally’s Instagram post detailing two incidents involving Corden, the comedian and talk show host allegedly complained there was a “little bit of egg white” in his wife’s egg yolk omelet she ordered. McNally initially banned Corden from the restaurant over his behavior, but later removed the ban when he called him up to “apologize profusely.”
In a comment provided to TMZ, McNally responded to the Late Late Show host’s decision to walk back on his apology. "I have no wish to kick a man when he's down, but I believe the best way for James Corden to retrieve some of the vast respect the public had for him before this incident is to own up to it and apologize to the young servers he abused,” said the restaurateur. "If he's big enough to do that, he can eat free at Balthazar for the rest of the year."
McNally also shared yet another update regarding his thoughts on the situation on Instagram on Friday.
He questioned if Corden was “joking” when he claimed he hadn’t done “anything wrong, on any level,” or outright denying he engaged in abusive behavior toward the staff. "Whatever Corden meant, his implication was clear: he didn’t do it,” wrote McNally. “Although I didn’t witness the incident, lots of my restaurant’s floor staff did. They had nothing to gain by lying. Corden did.”
The restaurateur suggested that Corden should “live up to his Almighty initials and come clean,” instead of avoiding responsibility for his actions. “If the supremely talented actor wants to retrieve the respect he had from all his fans (all 4 of them) before this incident, then he should at least admit he did wrong,” the post continues.
