By Louis Chan, AsAmNews National Correspondent
(Editor’s Note: This post is updated with new comments from organizer Kim Saira.)
Some 60 people marched in front of CBS Studios in Studio City, CA Thursday demanding that TV host James Corden apologize for his Spill Your Guts segment.
The protest follows a pledge by Corden that he would drop Asian foods from Spill Your Guts which finds humor from foods he considers “disgusting” and “horrific,” including Asian foods such as balut, chicken feet and thousand year old eggs.
“The next time we do that bit, we absolutely won’t involve or use any of those foods,” Corden said in a recent interview on The Howard Stern Show, according to CNN. “As you said at the start, our show is a show about joy and light and love. We don’t want to make a show to upset anybody.”
It was The Late Late Show host’s first public comments about the controversy. He left open the possibility the segment would be canceled, according to a spokesperson for CBS.
Kim Saira, a 24-year-old Filipino Chinese American content creator and social influencer, launched a change.org petition demanding the cancellation of the segment along with a public apology from Corden. She also asked that he donate money to an Asian American non-profit.
“The Late Late Show did not reach out to me about this statement,” said Saira in an email to AsAmNews. “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. 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.”
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In an earlier Zoom interview with AsAmNews, she recalled her classmates making fun of the food she ate at lunch time and doesn’t want today’s young Asian American children to endure similar humiliation.
Her change.org petition has now gathered some 43,000 signatures. Saira attempted Thursday to deliver the petition to Corden, but security stopped her from entering the building. A spokesperson for Saira said numerous CBS employees exiting the studio expressed their support.
So far CBS has not issued a statement about the controversy.
“If the Late Late Show doesn’t respond, I’ll take it upon myself and the Asian American communities and people who have helped me with this event, to create our own fundraiser to benefit Asian American organizations, since the Late Late Show has just ignored and refused it,” Saira told AsAmNews today.
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