{"id":46510,"date":"2025-08-06T00:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T00:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46510\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T00:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T00:06:08","slug":"hbos-john-oliver-on-stephen-colbert-last-week-tonight-late-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/46510\/","title":{"rendered":"HBO’s John Oliver on Stephen Colbert, ‘Last Week Tonight,’ Late Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJohn Oliver<\/a> may delight in biting the corporate hand that feeds him \u2014 \u201cthere\u2019s no tastier hand,\u201d he insists \u2014 but he is deeply grateful for his perch. With his pal <\/a>Stephen Colbert<\/a>\u2019s Late Show recently canceled amid financial losses to the tune of tens of millions a year and a pending multibillion-dollar merger at its parent company, Oliver\u2019s Last\u202fWeek Tonight finds itself ensconced in its premium cable\/streaming corner at HBO<\/a>, where it tackles complicated, often uncomfortable subjects such as immigration, policing and juvenile justice.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, Oliver is adamant that it\u2019s the show\u2019s bevy of awards<\/a> \u2014 30 Emmys<\/a> and counting \u2014 that has kept it on the air and without interference for 12 seasons. Come September, it will vie for six more, including outstanding scripted variety series. Zooming from Last\u202fWeek Tonight\u2019s Manhattan offices in late July, Oliver weighed in on his battles with legal, his concerns for late night and his desired level of anxiety.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast Week Tonight segments come together in six weeks. When in that timeline does the comedy get layered in?<\/p>\n

\n\tReally late. The jokes used to come in earlier, but you don\u2019t want to start writing before a story is stable because then you\u2019ll fall in love with jokes that are built on material that doesn\u2019t stand up, and that\u2019s a terrible position to put comedy writers in. So, it\u2019s only in the last two weeks that the jokes come in. But in that first month, you\u2019re trying to give people ingredients that they\u2019ll be able to create comedy from. You want it to be like an episode of Chopped, where it\u2019s not impossible to make something palatable at the end. So, you\u2019re not giving them broken glass and weed killer. You\u2019ll give them eggs.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen was last time a Last Week segment made you genuinely anxious?<\/p>\n

\n\tI mean, there\u2019s always a low-level anxiety with every story. I\u2019d argue a healthy level of anxiety. And it\u2019s only ever about whether people are going to be willing to listen to us talk about something, because it\u2019s so superficially dry or contentious that you\u2019re not sure if it\u2019s something people will want to hear, and then you\u2019re practicing force-feeding. But that\u2019s part of the joy of having this show \u2014 the ability to show people things they might not necessarily think, on their face, they want to see. I mean, just a few weeks ago, we did a long piece on juvenile justice, and that\u2019s the kind of story where you think, \u201cI\u2019m not sure people want to hear this,\u201d but I am sure that it\u2019s the absolute point of having a show like this.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom the Emmy stage<\/a>, you thanked HBO and \u201cour lawyers, who are angry with us all the time.\u201d What is that push and pull like?<\/p>\n

\n\tThey are our final line of defense, so it has to be a functional relationship, but it can be fraught, especially toward the end. The general tension that we land on is having a slightly different view of their job. They think it\u2019s to stop us from getting sued, and I think it\u2019s to make sure that when we are sued, we win. So, yeah, I\u2019m half-joking when I say it\u2019s a fraught relationship. It\u2019s an important process for the script to go through, but it can be not infrequently tense.<\/p>\n

\n\tI can imagine.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut you also don\u2019t get to be angry at the lifesaving device. (Laughs.)<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve had a revolving door of corporate owners. Is interference something you\u2019ve either experienced or worry about?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019ve not experienced interference, and I refuse to worry about something that hasn\u2019t happened yet. My tolerance level, were it to, would be zero. This would be over real quick.<\/p>\n

\n\tPut another way, is there a \u201cthere but for the grace of God go I\u201d aspect to what appears to have happened with Colbert and his show?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe are fortunate enough to be in a very different situation than network commercial TV, so those corporate pressures are not comparable, and we have no pressures from advertisers.<\/p>\n

\n\tPresumably you saw the shots of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav palling around with Ivanka Trump in Sun Valley. What goes through your mind when you see something like that?<\/p>\n

\n\tI try to pay as little attention to what is happening outside of our show as possible because it feels like wasted energy. The moment that intrudes on our show, I will react very badly to it, but it hasn\u2019t. So, yeah, I try not to get angry about things that aren\u2019t happening to us.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, you seem to bite the hand that feeds you with regularity and some degree of glee \u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s no tastier hand!<\/p>\n

\n\tI was watching the segment that you did a few months ago about Trump and the media, and at one point, you just started railing against your corporate parent and the idiocy of the HBO Max name changes<\/a>. Again, seemingly with glee. Did you hear from anyone afterward?<\/p>\n

\n\tNo. And you\u2019re right, I\u2019m truly happy in those moments. That\u2019s probably the most at peace I am, when I\u2019m trying to draw fire from our owners.<\/p>\n

\n\tShould we unpack that? What does that say about you?<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know, and I refuse to turn this into a therapy session. (Laughs.) But I always used to love watching David Letterman do it. To me, it felt like a really healthy sign of contempt and just a very fun and slightly important indication of noncompliance. So, I loved it when he\u2019d make fun of G.E. and CBS and, yeah, for me, making fun of whoever owns us on a minute-to-minute basis is a thrill.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou grew up on Letterman. Do you worry about the future of late night TV<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\n\tOn network TV? Yeah, it\u2019s constantly evolving. What\u2019s happened to The Late Show is incredibly sad for comedy and, obviously, for the staff in that building. It really resonated with me when Stephen said he was hoping to hand this show over to someone else<\/a>. You hope that the franchise lives on partly because there are generations of teenagers watching those shows and deciding, \u201cMaybe I\u2019d like to be a comedy writer,\u201d and then maybe writing on that show. So, just as there are Colbert writers that watched Letterman, there will be future writers that watched Colbert, and you want that to continue. I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll find a way to exist in some form, we just don\u2019t yet know exactly what that\u2019s going to look like for network television.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve had success having a point of view on your show, as Colbert has, at least in the ratings. Late night used to be broad, unifying entertainment. I know Jay Leno recently spoke on this topic<\/a>, about making a show for everyone \u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m going to take a hard pass on taking comedic advice from Jay Leno.<\/p>\n

\n\tFair enough, but should these shows still try to be for everyone, or is that as antiquated as the tanning bed?<\/p>\n

\n\tWho thinks that way? Executives? Comedy can\u2019t be for everyone. It\u2019s inherently subjective. So, yeah, when you do stand-up, some people try to play to a broader audience, which is completely legitimate. Others decide not to, which is equally legitimate. I guess I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a question of what you should do because I don\u2019t think comedy is prescriptive in that way. It\u2019s just what people want. I think our show clearly comes from a point of view, but most of those long stories we do are not party political. They\u2019re about systemic issues. Our last few shows were about gang databases, AI slop, juvenile justice, med spas, air traffic control. I\u2019m not saying that these don\u2019t have a point of view in them. Of course they do. But I hope a lot of them actually reach across people\u2019s political persuasions. You want people to at least be able to agree on the problem, even if you disagree on what the solution to it is.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs someone who\u2019s found a version of a late night show that succeeds on streaming, do you think it\u2019s replicable and, if so, what should it look like?<\/p>\n

\n\tI have absolutely no idea. [Late New York Times media columnist] David Carr said something so nice at the end of our first year. He\u2019d liked our show, and he said to me, \u201cIf you had described this show to me before I saw it, I would\u2019ve said it sounded terrible.\u201d It was so honest; I\u2019ve never forgotten it. Because I don\u2019t think, on the page, our show sounds very good. I mean, we\u2019re doing, like, 40 minutes on juvenile justice.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt doesn\u2019t exactly scream commercial.<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, it doesn\u2019t. So I don\u2019t know that you can emulate this success. I think it might\u2019ve been a mistake or a lightning strike. I just don\u2019t know that this is scalable. But I\u2019d really like late night to exist in some form somewhere. My favorite thing is when you can have things that both have a strong point of view and are incredibly stupid. Seth [Meyers], last week, did some great shows, and he also did an amazing segment about how to pronounce \u201ccroissant.\u201d Did you see that? It was so good. It was the hardest I laughed all week. So, I love the fact that those things can coexist, and I don\u2019t want that to go away.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe camaraderie that the late night hosts have now is so vastly different from the environment you grew up with.<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, the stakes are just lower now. There\u2019s no point being in a war. You\u2019re not fighting over any meaningful territory. (Laughs.)<\/p>\n

\n\tMany of you came on Colbert\u2019s show on July 21, appearing in a Coldplay kiss-cam spoof,<\/a> shortly after the news of his cancellation. What did that outreach look like?<\/p>\n

\n\tWell, we\u2019ve been in contact as a group since the strike [several of them hosted a podcast, Strike Force Five], so as soon as the news broke, we were all checking in with Stephen in that chat and then he came up with the idea and asked us to come, and of course we\u2019re all going to do it. You want to be able to support him and his staff in a horrible, horrible time.<\/p>\n

\n\tI did appreciate just how much everyone sort of played into their brand while sitting there, down to Anderson Cooper looking fairly uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnderson was almost emitting a sense of, \u201cWhy am I here?\u201d A legitimate question!<\/p>\n

\n\tBack to your show. Amid all the bleakness, you and your writers decided to give yourselves this ambitious side project, rebranding a minor league baseball team the Erie Moon Mammoths<\/a>. How much pressure did you feel to make sure that was something that could produce actual civic pride, rather than simply five funny minutes on HBO?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe reason we first started talking about it is that we were doing a show about deportations \u2014 so, monumentally bleak \u2014 and it felt like an example of when you\u2019ve had a kale-based meal, it\u2019s nice to serve something resembling a dessert at the end of it. One of our writers, Charlie, he pitched this story about minor league baseball and just how eccentric and, in many ways, life affirming it is, and we had the idea at the end of that to issue this offer [to have Last Week Tonight have carte blanche to rebrand a team]. We thought someone might take our offer, but we weren\u2019t sure. So, if it was just that and no one offered, that was fine. Once it became clear that people were really interested, then it felt like it might be something that could spin us out of a bunch of very dense, dark stories. Then you want to execute it as well as you possibly can. You don\u2019t want it to be a drive-by joke at the place you\u2019re picking. You want to pick a place that can handle it but also needs it.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt became a feel-good story at a time when we so desperately need a feel-good story.<\/p>\n

\n\tI know. It is odd the extent to which it repaired some of my faith in human nature, and that is a very weird thing to find yourself saying when you\u2019re standing next to a seven-foot purple mammoth.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of happy endings, earlier this year, HBO let you return to releasing full segments of your show on YouTube the day after airing. What changed?<\/p>\n

\n\tI think they wanted to see if moving it back on YouTube had an effect on our ratings. I didn\u2019t think it would, which is why I was against moving it in the first place. And I was massively grateful that, upon looking at it, they realized it wasn\u2019t having a negative enough effect to be worth doing. Again, in the difficulty of the media environment that we\u2019re in, I try to be as cognizant as I can be that HBO is still a fantastic place to work.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet you make a lot of jokes about how all these Emmys are your show\u2019s only armor against getting canceled.<\/p>\n

\n\tI mean, two things can be true at the same time. (Laughs.) It\u2019s a fantastic place to work while we are insulated by golden armor. If that stops, we might be going away.<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you genuinely believe that?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not entirely a joke, that\u2019s for sure. I think it is objectively very, very helpful to have won Emmys with the show. I think it has helped us keep our independence and keep the show on the air. So, yeah, I do think there is a utility to it. It\u2019s something that I know has always been important to HBO, and so I\u2019m massively grateful that we\u2019ve won them, and long may that continue. Please! I don\u2019t want my theory tested.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis story appeared in the Aug. 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.\u00a0Click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Oliver may delight in biting the corporate hand that feeds him \u2014 \u201cthere\u2019s no tastier hand,\u201d he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,1703,12439,16906,40064,134,9054,12441,40065,28684,3869,4626,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-46510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-awards","11":"tag-emmy-awards","12":"tag-emmys","13":"tag-emmys-2025","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-hbo","16":"tag-john-oliver","17":"tag-last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver","18":"tag-late-night-tv","19":"tag-stephen-colbert","20":"tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","21":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}