If you’re a James Corden fan, you’re probably familiar with his hilarious show The Late Late Show with James Corden. He’s especially known for his Carpool Karaoke segments, where he picks up a celebrity and they ride around town singing that singer’s songs together. Whether it’s Celine Dion or Paul McCartney, they’re always laugh-til-you-cry type of funny.
But another one of his segments that doesn’t get as much attention is called Crosswalk the Musical, where he and a theatre troupe perform songs in real crosswalks in real time.
A little background about this segment: Contrary to popular belief,, Crosswalk the Musical is done without closing down the streets and and is not done in an area where people know what’s happening. “Though there are police there to oversee and protect it all, it’s still very real,” Chloe Arnold, the show’s choreographer. “We’re not closing the street down. This is in real time.”
That means the crew usually has under a minute to sing and dance in the streets before they have to run off the crosswalk. As you can imagine, like everything else Corden does, it makes for pretty hilarious TV entertainment.
Usually, they Crosswalk troupe just outside their own city of Los Angeles, but in a recent segment, Corden and his team traveled outside the country to really bring Crosswalk the Musical to another level.
Corden and his Crosswalk team found themselves in Paris (yes, France!) to perform songs from Les Misérables for his recent segment—and let us tell you, it’s definitely the best one yet.
In perhaps an even busier crosswalk (and an even more impatient one!), than ones in LA, the crew took the crosswalk of Paris to perform a number of the musical’s most famous songs, including “Master of the House,” “Do You Hear the People Sing,” and “I Dreamed a Dream.”
Not only did they sing the songs with a passion and emotional that only Corden could pull off, they got some of the strangest looks from Parisian passerbys. Plus, with the French being known for their impatient driving, you better believe they got beeped off the Crosswalk several times. Corden even joked, “I’ll see you in court,” to one of the cars.
“Once James [Corden] steps in, you want to laugh at everything, but what makes what we’re doing funny is that we take it very seriously,” Arnold says. “So I always have to tell the dancers: ‘You approach the crosswalk like this is Broadway. Like this is the best thing you’ve ever done in your life.’ And that’s what makes it so funny, because people that are driving by are like, Why is there a full-blown production in the street?”
“It’s truly the example of teamwork makes the dream work,” Arnold concluded about the Crosswalk the Musical segment. “Because if one person is off, it throws off the whole puzzle. This really is a puzzle.”
She’s not the only one laughing hysterically—you’ve got to see Corden’s latest French Crosswalk the Musical segment for yourself. Take 12 minutes out of your day if you need a good belly laugh:
Are you a fan of James Corden’s Crosswalk the Musical segment? What do you think of his Les Misérables in Paris version?