-Welcome back to "Late Night." We're here with John Oliver.
-Yes. -I guess now, two weeks ago,
you did a wonderful piece about Ron DeSantis.
-Yeah. -He then --
The "L.A. Times," I guess, he gave an quote to them
and he called you irrelevant. -He did?
-Yeah. -I mean, it's a fair hit.
I don't know. [ Laughter ]
It might be the first thing he said
I've agreed with, to be honest. [ Laughter ]
I mean, it's also a little rich, because we reached out to them
in advance of putting that piece on.
We reached out to them. -So, you never do a piece
about anybody without reaching out?
-No! No. We had pages of questions for him.
And they ghosted us on all of them.
So, yeah, his response was literally irrelevant to us
because he didn't [Bleep] provide one.
[ Laughter ] Yeah, it's very irritating.
-The best detail in one, I'm assuming,
you did reach out to get clarification on
was that he pronounced, on purpose --
-Yes. -He purposefully mispronounced.
He knows you pronounce it "Thai,"
but that he would go on dates and say "thigh" food.
-That's right. That was his technique
as a young man on the dating scene.
[ Laughter ]
He would mispronounce it "thigh food"
and wait for his date to react.
And apparently, if she corrected him,
he would end the date
because he did not want to be corrected.
[ Laughter ] Which feels like --
I wanted -- we reached out to find out, "Is this true?
If not, please do deny it because it feels really true."
[ Laughter ]
"It feels so emblematic of you as a human being.
If you didn't do it, arguably you should have done.
It would have made more sense of who you are."
-So, he's a little hard on you. In general,
you've obviously made a very nice run of things
here in the States, but -- -Wow, are you --
Is this the end?
This feels like what someone does to fire someone?
[ Laughter ] "You've had a very nice run."
-"You have nothing to be ashamed of."
[ Laughter ]
Well, this is from a while back. But I would assume
you're sort of like a favorite son back in the U.K.
-Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. -There's been some --
This is an article from the "Times."
It's a big newspaper. -Big newspaper.
Yeah, Murdoch owns, so he can go [Bleep] himself.
[ Laughter ]
Yeah. Yeah. [ Cheers and applause ]
-"John Oliver: the British comedy failure
who makes America laugh." [ Laughter ]
Did you know this was coming? -[ Laughs ]
I didn't know that headline was coming.
[ Laughter ] I knew an article was coming,
because they said, like, "Would you like
to do an interview for this?"
And I thought, it'll be on the front page
of, like, the culture supplement of the "Times."
I thought, "That will be great. It will be a sort of
nice surprise for my parents." [ Laughter ]
And then I had a conversation with this journalist,
like an hour and a half, felt like, "Oh,
this has gone quite well. I think we've hit it off.
I don't think I've said anything that's gonna look bad in print."
I was actually looking forward to it coming out.
[ Laughter ] And then that was the headline.
[ Laughter ] And it got --
The British people are just absolute black belts
at passive aggression, and that really feels like
it's a compliment really wrapped in concrete-enforced insults.
[ Laughter ]
-Your show is coming up on 10 years of your show.
-Yes. [ Cheers and applause ]
Thanks. And you. -We started
around the same time. -Yes.
-Has your show -- Do you feel your show is a good reflection
of the show you pitched when you first started doing it?
-No! Partly because I think,
if you pitched this show now, like, it wouldn't sound great.
Right? You'd say, "Oh,
we're gonna go up against the Oscars
with a piece on America's welfare-reform mistakes."
[ Laughter ]
Literally, nobody wants to see that.
But even at the time, it was just
that I'd sat in for Jon Stewart while he was away
for the summer, at the "Daily Show."
So HBO had offered me a show on Sunday night.
And we -- Tim Carvell and I,
who worked at "The Daily Show" as well,
we didn't really know what we wanted to do,
other than talk more on a Sunday.
That was it.
But we had a whole, like, guest area of our studio built.
-And so how long into the process
did you bail on the idea of doing guests?
-Really quick. We did two test shows.
And HBO came -- their one note on the test shows.
"Well, you know you don't have to have a guest.
You could just add that time to the story."
And we jumped so quickly on that because, again,
you are good at talking to guests.
I am -- I would find it hard to fake enthusiasm
for an objectively bad movie
that was being pitched in front of me.
-The longer you do this job, you know there's no bad movies.
[ Laughter ] -I love it.
I love watching you interview people so much
just to see -- I can see it. It's such a suppressed glint
in your eye of, "Well, congratulations."
[ Laughter ] -How dare you!
Don't give up the game. [ Laughter ]
-"'Shazam! 2' looks great." -No, no.
-"Coming to a theater near you." [ Laughter ]
-It does look great. -It does look good.
It does look good. -How dare you.
How dare you use a recent and specific example.
[ Laughter ]
-I'm sorry. I was -- I swear.
I -- I swear to you.
I swear, my mind was going through a bunch of things.
And it was right in the front.
I did think, "Not the best example."
-Yeah, yeah. -Ii mean, yes, the best example,
but not for now. [ Laughter ]
And then I drew a blank. You're right. It's a problem.
-Yeah, yeah. Well, you know what?
And guess what, now I also think
Ron DeSantis was right about something.
[ Laughter ]
-Oh. -Oh, well,
what a lovely, tough thing it is to see you, as always.
-Oh, thanks. You too, mate. [ Laughter ]
-Please, you guys, give it up for our good friend.
John Oliver, everybody. "Last Week Tonight"
airs Sunday nights on HBO, streams on HBO Max.
We'll be right back with more "Late Night."