John Oliver Is Going To War With Saturday Night Live
Last Week Tonight's John Oliver dissed Saturday Night Live, as the two are now in the same Emmys category.
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver is set to do battle with Saturday Night Live, figuratively speaking. According to Deadline, the host will now have to directly compete with NBC’s variety sketch series at the Emmy Awards going forward. The two programs will now duke it out for the Scripted Variety Series Emmy after the TV Academy replaced the Variety Talk and Variety Sketch Series categories.
John Oliver’s show is set to return for its 10th season on Sunday, February 19. In a playful jab at the long-running NBC sketch series, the British comedian recently took to Twitter to post a hosting announcement that looks identical to the ones the official account for Saturday Night Live posts when they announce a new host. The tweet has already garnered nearly 6,000 likes and has been retweeted nearly 300 times.
Plenty of users also took to the comments to share their excitement for the new season of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Funny enough, many fans were initially thrown off by the post believing the comedian would be hosting a future episode of Saturday Night Live. So far, the official Twitter account of NBC’s variety sketch show has yet to respond.
The TV Academy’s decision to do away with the Variety Talk and Variety Sketch Series categories at the Emmys comes at a time when the number of late-night talk shows and variety shows continues to decline. In addition to Warner Bros. Discovery canceling Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, we also learned The Late Late Show with James Corden will be ending this spring. The Emmy-nominated program will reportedly be replaced by a reboot of @midnight.
It will certainly be interesting to see Last Week Tonight with John Oliver competing with Saturday Night Live in the same category for the first time at this year’s Emmy Awards, which is scheduled to air in September. The former has won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Talk Series for the last seven years. Meanwhile, SNL has won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series for the past six years.
Last Week Tonight premiered in April 2014 on HBO and was an instant hit for the network. The half-hour-long show shares several similarities with Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, with both programs taking a satirical look at news, politics, and current events. With that said, it should come as no surprise that John Oliver was previously featured as a correspondent and fill-in host for The Daily Show before landing his own late-night series.
John Oliver was initially contracted with HBO for two years with an option for extension. In September 2020, the network announced the show had been renewed for three additional seasons consisting of 30 episodes each, keeping the show on the air through 2023. The show’s tenth season will premiere February 19, 2023, and while there’s currently no word if the program will continue after its latest season, we would be pretty shocked if HBO didn’t renew Last Week Tonight for additional seasons.
