Adele joins James Corden for his very last 'Carpool Karaoke'

"The Late Late Show" host James Corden rode with his close family friend, the singer Adele, in the final "Carpool Karaoke" segment of his CBS talk show, which ends its run early Friday after eight years. The segment, set to air in prime-time on "The Last Last Late Late Show with James Corden Carpool Karaoke Special" Thursday at 10 p.m., was previewed as a 21-minute online video.

"I'm going to wake James up and drive him to work," Adele, 34, dressed in a trench coat, tells a camera crew outside either Corden's house or a set representing it. Creeping upstairs to a bedroom, she bangs a pair of cymbals to ostensibly awaken fellow Londoner Corden, 44, who is sleeping alone for the comedy bit, though he is married to wife Julia, with whom he has three children.

Once in the SUV, Adele at the wheel warns, "I'm actually not a brilliant driver." It is unclear if she actually is driving: Corden in 2020, responding to a tweeted video of him and pop star Justin Bieber being towed while they pretended to drive — standard procedure for filmed driving scenes — said, "I always drive the car unless we’re doing something where we think it might not be safe," adding, "I swear to you, 95% of the time, I really am endangering the lives of the world’s biggest pop stars."

As the segment proceeds, Corden and Adele banter between duets of her songs "Rolling in the Deep," "Love Is a Game," "I Drink Wine" and "Hometown Glory" and the 1964 Bob Merrill-Jule Styne standard "Don't Rain On My Parade," popularized by Barbra Streisand in the musical "Funny Girl." "This is it," Corden reflects. "The last 'Carpool.' I'm excited and scared in equal measure. … It's been a crazy eight years" since he took over the show from Craig Ferguson.

"The thing I was most worried about was how do we get guests on the show," he recalls, adding of "Carpool Karaoke" that "no one would do it. Everyone on planet Earth said no." Then music superstar and Long Island native Mariah Carey said yes — but when Corden and his crew arrived to shoot, she told him, "I'll do the chat; I ain't singin'."

She relented, as seen in a clip, and later, Corden says, "Stevie Wonder changed it a lot because I think when he did it, other artists were like, 'Well if Stevie Wonder's done it, I'll do it.' "

Adele at one point becomes emotional as she recalls going on vacation with her son Angelo and Corden and his family after her 2019 divorce from husband Simon Konecki. "You and Jules and the kids," she says, tearing up, "were so integral in looking after me and Angelo. … I remember you used to do it with humor as well. You used to be, like, 'Good luck with that one!' … You were, like, always an adult to me."

Toward the end Corden says he will "miss everything" about doing the show. "I will just miss going in to work with my friends every day. And I'm really going to miss Los Angeles. I love it here. It's been a brilliant adventure. But I'm just so certain that it's time for us as a family, with people getting older and people that we miss, it's just — it's time to go home."