John Oliver on 'Last Week Tonight.' HBO Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment John Oliver may delight in biting the corporate hand that feeds him - "there's no tastier hand," he insists - but he is deeply grateful for his perch. With his pal Stephen Colbert's 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's Last Week Tonight finds itself ensconced in its premium cable/streaming corner at HBO, where it tackles complicated, often uncomfortable subjects such as immigration, policing and juvenile justice. Still, Oliver is adamant that it's the show's bevy of awards - 30 Emmys and counting - 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 Week Tonight's Manhattan offices in late July, Oliver weighed in on his battles with legal, his concerns for late night and his desired level of anxiety. Related Stories TV Stephen Colbert Lands New Late Night Role on CBS Crime Comedy 'Elsbeth' TV Marc Maron Jokes He's "Not Afraid to Die Anymore" as Long as This Taylor Swift Song Is Playing Last Week Tonight segments come together in six weeks. When in that timeline does the comedy get layered in? Really late. The jokes used to come in earlier, but you don't want to start writing before a story is stable because then you'll fall in love with jokes that are built on material that doesn't stand up, and that's a terrible position to put comedy writers in. So, it's only in the last two weeks that the jokes come in. But in that first month, you're trying to give people ingredients that they'll be able to create comedy from. You want it to be like an episode of Chopped, where it's not impossible to make something palatable at the end. So, you're not giving them broken glass and weed killer. You'll give them eggs. When was last time a Last Week segment made you genuinely anxious? I mean, there's always a low-level anxiety with every story. I'd argue a healthy level of anxiety. And it's only ever about whether people are going to be willing to listen to us talk about something, because it's so superficially dry or contentious that you're not sure if it's something people will want to hear, and then you're practicing force-feeding. But that's part of the joy of having this show - 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's the kind of story where you think, "I'm not sure people want to hear this," but I am sure that it's the absolute point of having a show like this. From the Emmy stage, you thanked HBO and "our lawyers, who are angry with us all the time." What is that push and pull like? They 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's to stop us from getting sued, and I think it's to make sure that when we are sued, we win. So, yeah, I'm half-joking when I say it's a fraught relationship. It's an important process for the script to go through, but it can be not infrequently tense. I can imagine. But you also don't get to be angry at the lifesaving device. (Laughs.) You've had a revolving door of corporate owners. Is interference something you've either experienced or worry about? We've not experienced interference, and I refuse to worry about something that hasn't happened yet. My tolerance level, were it to, would be zero. This would be over real quick. Put another way, is there a "there but for the grace of God go I" aspect to what appears to have happened with Colbert and his show? We 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. Presumably 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? I 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't. So, yeah, I try not to get angry about things that aren't happening to us. At the same time, you seem to bite the hand that feeds you with regularity and some degree of glee ... There's no tastier hand! I 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