James Corden Calls Restaurant Ban Drama “Silly,” Says “I Haven’t Done Anything Wrong, on Any Level”

James Corden is speaking out after being called out for alleged “abusive” restaurant behavior.

In an interview with The New York Times, the Late Late Show host reflected on the drama that stemmed from an Instagram post from restaurateur Keith McNally.

McNally wrote in an Instagram post that he had banned Corden as a customer from the New York restaurant Balthazar, describing the late night host as “a Hugely gifted comedian, but a tiny Cretin of a man. And the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago.”

In the post, he detailed incidents in which Corden was “extremely nasty” to the Balthazar manager and, in another incident, yelled at a server after an omelet order was wrong.

McNally would later reveal in another post that Corden had apologized to him: “All is Forgiven. I strongly believe in second chances.” He continued, “anyone magnanimous enough to apologize to a deadbeat layabout like me (and my staff) doesn’t deserve to be banned from anywhere.”

When speaking about McNally’s posts for the first time publicly, Corden told the Times that he considers the whole brouhaha “silly” and said that he hasn’t “done anything wrong, on any level.”

“I was there. I get it,” he said. “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.”

The Times interview took place at a New York eatery and at one point during the discussion, a customer sent back their eggs after they were not to their liking. Corden quipped, “Happens every day. 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,” he added.

Corden later shared that he didn’t read the online conversations about him following the post and is likely to address everything in Monday’s broadcast of The Late Late Show.

“I haven’t really read anything. It’s strange,” he told the Times. “It’s strange when you were there. I think I’m probably going to have to talk about it on Monday’s show. My feeling, often, is, never explain, never complain. But I’ll probably have to talk about it.

“Should we not all be a little grown-up about this?” he continued. “I promise you, ask around this restaurant. They don’t know about this. Maybe 15 percent of people. I’ve been here, been walking around New York, not one person’s come up to me. We’re dealing in two worlds here.”

He also argued that if he “lived on Twitter” then “Hillary Clinton is the president of the United States and Jeremy Corbyn won by a landslide.”

He also compared the critical social media posts about him to a school principal offering help to classroom bullies. “The principal makes the decision to stand up and say, ‘I’d like all of those bullies to come up onto the stage and say, into the microphone, what they’ve just been saying in the hallway over there,’” he said.

McNally took to Instagram to respond to comments Corden made to the Times, stating that though he has “no wish to kick a man when he’s down. Especially one who’s worth $100 Million” he had issue with Corden stating that he hadn’t done “anything wrong.” McNally said, “Was he joking? Or was he denying being abusive to my servers? Whatever Corden meant, his implication was clear: he didn’t do it.

“Although I didn’t witness the incident, lots of my restaurant’s floor staff did. They had nothing to gain by lying. Corden did,” he continued. “I wish James Corden would live up to his Almighty initials and come clean. 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. If he goes one step further and apologizes to the 2 servers he insulted, I’ll let him eat for free at Balthazar for the next 10 years.”

Oct. 21, 10:25 a.m. PT Updated with Keith McNally’s Instagram post.