The Last Week Tonight host swears he’s only kidding.
With Last Week Tonight, John Oliver has found himself in the curious, and enviable, position of hosting a satirical news show that frequently makes news. Whether by setting up a fake church to show the flimsiness of religious tax exemptions, urging viewers to overload the FCC website’s servers with angry comments as a way of calling attention to the end of net neutrality, or snagging an interview with Edward Snowden, the 38-year-old Oliver, whose show just began a third season on HBO, has displayed a knack for getting attention with comedy that feels a little like activism. (Though he swears,repeatedly, that the latter is not the point.) Over two long interviews at the show’s offices on Manhattan’s far West Side, Oliver, an intensely self-deprecating (that is, English) and far more low-key presence than his righteously aggrieved on-air persona suggests, talked about what he’s learned from his old Daily Show boss, Jon Stewart; being an outsider in America; and the simple pleasure of calling someone a dirty word.
This interview was condensed and edited from two conversations, the first conducted on January 18 and the second on January 28.
I hear you’re a new father to a baby boy. Congratulations. What’s his name?
Hudson.
I guess you can see the river from your office.
This story is from the February 22 – March 6, 2016 edition of New York magazine.
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This story is from the February 22 – March 6, 2016 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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