Carrying his two new Emmys awards, John Oliver was making his manner by the packed HBO afterparty Monday evening when he stopped to talk with Deadline about his relationship with fellow late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers.
Together, they launched a restricted sequence podcast, Strike Force Five, through the WGA strike to help their crew members who had been out of labor as a result of the exhibits had shut down as a result of strike.
“Honestly the dynamic had less to do with the podcast and more to do with the fact that the strike was so stressful, it was nice to be able to actually lean on each other a little bit,” Oliver stated in regards to the quintet staying in fixed communication through the work stoppage. “Not even necessarily anything to do with the podcast, just talking to each other regularly on Zoom.”
Oliver famous the frosty relationship between then-top late-night hosts through the 2007-08 WGA strike when the exhibits finally returned on the air, one after the other, with out writers. It didn’t occur this time due to efforts to help struggling crew members through different means, together with Strike Force Five.
“It was so fractured the last night in 2008 because the hosts hated each other, and it was really helpful to be able to just lean on each other during that difficult time,” Oliver stated. “The most useful thing was just being able before and during the strike to constantly be in contact with each other to make sure that we were all on the same page and we could keep the shows off the air. For that, it was massively useful.”
The shut private relationship between the 5 hosts has continued post-strike with them staying in a gaggle chat collectively, Oliver revealed. Did his American counterparts use the textual content chain to congratulate Oliver on his newest Emmys?
“Of course,” the British-born comic stated.
This yr, Last Week Tonight gained one other Outstanding Writing For Variety Series trophy in addition to the primary ever Emmy within the newly created class of Outstanding Scripted Variety Series the place it confronted NBC’s stalwart Saturday Night Live.
Asked about how he feels beating SNL of their head-to-head, Oliver stated, “I don’t really think of it that way. It feels so weird to be at these events anyway. The whole thing just feels very confusing.”
After competing (and constantly profitable) in opposition to Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon and Meyers’ exhibits for seven years within the Outstanding Variety Talk Series, Oliver’s Last Week Tonight was moved to the newly created Scripted Variety Series discipline this yr.
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Late Night With Seth Meyers had been nominated within the Outstanding Talk Series class however misplaced to The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, the newest incarnation of The Daily Show, which Noah initially joined in 2014, shortly after Oliver had left it to begin Last Week Tonight.
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