For John Oliver, recent news that Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery would press pause on their $110 billion merger has HBO’s troublemaking golden boy feeling … much like he did before. “Nothing’s happening, and everything has stayed the same,” says Oliver, during a phone call early Friday morning. “That’s the only way that we can really move forward, total denial.”
The host of Last Week Tonight says he long ago learned to keep his head down when, as he puts it, “prospective business daddies” weigh the future of his employer. So, as his current contract is due to expire at year’s end, late-night’s reigning Emmy magnet is staying the course. He just picked up the option to extend his contract by another year, keeping him at his hit show through 2027.
This is good news not only for Oliver’s devoted viewers, over 2 million of them streaming his weekly deep dives on YouTube alone, but also for his platform. Last Week Tonight has delivered 76 Emmy nominations and 32 wins to HBO since it launched in 2014. On the occasion of his latest three nominations and his extension, Oliver spoke about his wild run, his latest corporate target (litigious Texas convenience store chain Buc-ees), keeping the late-night host group chat alive after Stephen Colbert‘s cancellation and the irony of U.S. Secretary of Health RFK Jr. launching a cooking show as lettuce sends thousands of Americans to the hospital and the toilet.
