James Corden’s Judi Dench joke didn’t go quite as planned.
After the former host of The Late Late Show told a NSFW joke about the legendary actress and famed immunologist Anthony Fauci, the star-studded audience reacted with a painfully awkward silence.
“Tonight is the one night that Hollywood and science come together,” Corden said while presenting an award at the 2025 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony April 5, per a video obtained by the Daily Mail. “Other than, of course, that one magical evening where Dr. Fauci had a one-night stand with Dame Judi Dench.”
When the camera panned to the crowd, Olivia Wilde could be seen sitting at a table with her mouth agape and a look of pure shock on her face.
E! News has reached out to Corden, Fauci and Dench’s reps for comment but has not heard back.
But this isn’t the first time that the British comedian told a joke that seemed to miss the mark. At 2017’s AmfAR Gala in Los Angeles, Corden kicked off the event with a joke about Harvey Weinstein, not long after the sexual abuse allegations against him surfaced. (Weinstein was subsequently convicted of sexual assault in California and is currently in a New York jail while he awaits a retrial on separate sexual assault charges, for which he has pleaded not guilty.)
“This is a beautiful room,” the Gavin & Stacy creator said onstage. “It’s a beautiful night here in L.A. So beautiful, Harvey Weinstein has already asked tonight up to his hotel to give him a massage.”
And only a few days had passed before the 46-year-old apologized for poking fun at a serious situation.
“To be clear, sexual assault is no laughing matter,” Corden wrote on X (formerly Twitter) amid the ongoing backlash. “I was not trying to make light of Harvey’s inexcusable behavior, but to shame him, the abuser, not his victims.”
“I am truly sorry for anyone offended,” he continued, “that was never my intention.”
More recently, the Into the Woods star found himself fighting allegations that he exemplified unacceptable and “abusive” behavior to staff after restaurateur Keith McNally shared that he banned him from one of his New York City restaurants.
“James Corden is a Hugely gifted comedian, but a tiny Cretin of a man,” McNally wrote in an October 2022 Instagram post. “And the most abusive customer to my Balthazar servers since the restaurant opened 25 years ago.”
However, Corden clapped back as during an interview that same month with The New York Times, he noticed that a patron sitting near them at a restaurant sent back their dish. And he seized the opportunity to address the criticism he was receiving at the time.
“Can you imagine now, if we just blasted her on Twitter?” the Cats star said during the interview. “Would that be fair? This is my point. It’s insane.”
But just four days later, Corden admitted that, after his wife Julia Carey‘s meal was allegedly repeatedly served containing food she was allergic to, he may have lost his temper in the heat of the moment—though McNally later claimed that his story was a “massive lie.”
“Because I didn’t shout or scream or didn’t get up out of my seat, I didn’t call anyone names or use derogatory language, I’ve been walking around thinking that I haven’t done anything wrong,” Corden said during an episode of The Late Late Show. “But the truth is I have. I made a rude comment and it was wrong. It was an unnecessary comment. It was ungracious to the server.”
