Like all legends, John Travolta has absolutely aged like fine wine. The 65-year-old showed that he’s still got the moves when he gave a cheeky dance lesson to James Corden. Corden opened the segment by asking English power couple Aaron and Sam Taylor-Johnson about the time they dressed up as John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s Pulp Fiction characters for Halloween. Sam and Corden then raved about the classic movie, which features an iconic dance scene from Travolta and Thurman.
Corden then asked Travolta to give them a dance lesson. In his heyday, Travolta ruled the dance floor in roles such as Grease and Saturday Night Fever, and he proved to everyone watching that he had not forgotten how to shake a tail feather. Travolta taught the other three several dances, including the twist, the swim, the hip shaker, the mashed potatoes, and last but not least, the Batman. It was such a simple segment, but Travolta’s charisma just totally sold it, making it a real hoot to watch.
Travolta gave his dance class on The Late Late Show with James Corden on an episode that was uploaded on December 5, 2019. The feel-good segment was quite popular on Corden’s YouTube channel and attracted 18.9 million views. Fans loved to see Travolta back on the dance floor and added comments such as “The man’s still got it – you never lose class” and “John Travolta should be declared as a national treasure. Love the guy, so nice, iconic, resilient and positive.”
Travolta and Thurman’s dance scene in the Quentin Tarantino-directed Pulp Fiction is one of the most iconic scenes in all of cinema. In the film, Travolta plays career criminal Vincent Vega, who is given the task of entertaining his boss’s wife Mia Wallace, as played by Thurman. The pair stop by a venue, where Mia insists on joining the dance competition and the pair boogie down to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell.” The moves Travolta pulls on Corden’s show are featured in the original scene.
The Corden segment revealed some interesting facts about Travolta’s role in creating the dance scene in Pulp Fiction. The leading man explained that “Quentin was dead set on both of us doing the twist, which is a very fun dance, but it’s limited in how long one wants to watch someone doing the twist.”
Travolta continued, saying, “So I said to Quentin, when I was growing up there were novelty dances, like the swim and the Batman. I said ‘maybe we should widen the spectrum on this.’” After seeing Travolta’s novelty dances, the director was convinced and then the classic dance scene was born.