James Corden’s relationship with BTS’ fanbase has been rocky recently.
After a clip of the Late Late Show host went viral back in September joking about BTS’ U.N. appearance (and implying their fanbase was made up of “15-year-old girls”), the host received a large online backlash and accusations of betrayal (BTS have appeared alongside Corden on The Late Late Show previously, including in the host’s recurring Carpool Karaoke segment).
On Tuesday, they came back again. And after Corden asked how they were, RM turned the question back on him: “But James, how about you? You’ve been in some hot water with ARMY, are you alright?”
After resting his head on his arm for a while, Corden responded — and he started with an explanation of what had happened.
“We did two jokes, that I didn’t think were in any way offensive to anybody, where we said that we thought that it was unusual that you were kicking off the U.N. Summit with a performance, and we said — and this is where I think it was wrong — we said that your fans were 15-year-old girls,” Corden explained. “Which of course isn’t true, because I’m 43 years old and I consider myself to be one of the biggest BTS fans on planet Earth.”
Corden went on to say that he’d never been on that side of the ARMY before, and that he first found out about the backlash when Late Late Show band frontman Reggie Watts messaged him to ask if he was OK.
“I was like, well, someone just told me that they hope I die today, which did feel extreme,” Corden said. “It did feel extreme in response to what I thought were two quite harmless jokes, which we never wanted to be at anyone’s expense, because – I hope you know this – we absolutely love you and we love the entire ARMY.”
