Watch him work — wearing a wig he brought to set — in a new clip.
Photo: Chris Haston/Corday Productions

And now, this: Barely a month after he popped up on General Hospital, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver will begin a three-episode stint on Days of Our Lives on Tuesday, August 11, continuing a campaign he announced last spring to appear on any daytime drama that will have him. After playing a shadowy superspy on GH, Oliver’s role on the Peacock soap looks to be decidedly less glamorous — though potentially just as pivotal.

As you can see in an exclusive clip below, Oliver will inhabit — or perhaps the word is devour — the character of Devlin St. John, chief water inspector for the fictional town of Salem. Inspector St. John will ostensibly be looking into a contaminated well, grilling Days icon Susan Seaforth-Hayes (a.k.a. Julie Williams) about her unauthorized cleanup of the dirty-water source and delivering delicious daytime dialogue such as “You haven’t just cleaned the well. You’ve obliterated the data!” During his visit to Days, Oliver’s character will also take a meeting with Salem mayor Pauline Price (played by sitcom legend Jackée Harry) and confront the shady EJ DiMera (Dan Feuerriegel) about a criminal cover-up. “He’s in three shows he taped in two days,” Days executive producer Ken Corday tells Vulture. “He had about 60 pages that he’s in, and he knew it cold.”

Getting Oliver into Days so soon after he announced his desire to become a soap star was not as straightforward as it might seem. That’s because the sudser tapes episodes nearly a year ahead of time, which means episodes debuting this month were actually written and filmed last summer. “We didn’t want until next year for these shows to air, so we lifted [already produced] shows and put him in,” Corday says. Translated, that means the Days writers, led by co–executive producer and showrunner Noel Maxam, went back through dozens of already-taped story outlines in search of possible plot threads in which a new character played by Oliver could logically be inserted.

“We basically had to shoehorn him into our schedule because we were so far ahead,” Corday explains, adding that while the process “was somewhat complex,” Maxam and team pulled it all off without a problem, making sure Oliver’s new scenes matched what had been taped last year — and even inserting new music (which Corday composed, as he has for the show for decades). “It was basically ‘We have to do this; let’s get it done’.” the producer says. “And we did. He was too good to pass up.”

Though soap actors usually don’t get much of a say in their characters’ story lines, the Days team understandably made an exception for Oliver. While his overall story line was scripted by the show’s writers, Oliver’s team also punched up his dialogue to ensure that it matched his voice. “John and his producer had a lot of input in making the words fit the way he talks,” Corday explains. “He’s very machine-gun in how he speaks, so that took a little work. But in the end, we both got what we wanted.” Oliver’s input on his Days appearance also extended to his character’s look: The very middle-management hairstyle Inspector St. John rocks on the show is in fact a wig Oliver brought to the set himself (though the show’s hair-and-makeup team tweaked it a bit to make sure it was fully camera-ready).

Over its 61 seasons on television and streaming, Days has obviously had a number of famous faces stop by Salem, including a teenage LeAnn Rimes, soul-music icon Smokey Robinson, Real Housewives star Kyle Richards, and talk-show titan Jerry Springer. More recently, Dick Van Dyke snagged a Daytime Emmy for a multi-episode arc that aired in 2023. But despite that parade of stars, Corday predicts that Oliver’s character and story line will stand out from everything that’s come before. “There’s been nothing as crazy and on the nose as this,” he says.

Oliver’s three episodes of Days premiere on Peacock on August 11, 12, and 14. Watch an exclusive clip of his appearance below.

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