As the resident runaway wit of The Daily Show, John Oliver’s pop-cultural meteor is on the rise. As long as he doesn’t fail to mention an Apple product on the ascent.
“I work with John Hodgman,” who plays the PC guy in Apple’s hilarious ads, the 32-year-old Oliver told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. “Unless I have at least one Apple product on my person at all times, he is contractually obliged to slap me across the face.”
Oliver might soon have similar star power and sponsorships. His comedy showcase, John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show, premieres Friday on Comedy Central, giving the Emmy-nominated comedian a shot at becoming a household name. Oliver will host established comedians like Brian Posehn and Janeane Garofalo as well as talented up-and-comers on the weekly one-hour show.
Add the new comedy series to Oliver’s other pursuits — including The Bugle, his podcast with Andy Zaltzman for London’s Times, and a recent blind deal with Paramount Pictures — and you have a tech-savvy political snark shark on the hunt in much wider water.
Wired.com spoke with Oliver about his new show, his burgeoning career and America’s timetable for joining Britain in the post-empire convalescent home.
Wired.com: You, sir, are hilarious. You should do it for a living.
John Oliver: Thank you very much. I wish you could have told my parents that 10 years ago, when I was trying to explain to them what I was planning to do with my life. It would have been useful to have a reference from Wired to use during that awkward conversation.
Wired.com: This wasn’t the plan all along?
Oliver: Dad very much wanted me to be a professional football player. Soccer, as you inaccurately call it. And he just couldn’t see why I deliberately chose not to be good enough at our national sport for that to happen.
Wired.com: Does that make this stand-up show, with your name on it, payment for your terrible soccer skill?
Oliver: My name in the title is not only my payment for being funny, but also my actual payment for the show itself. My manager said something about it being “much more valuable than the soon-to-be-worthless dollar anyway.” The weird thing was that he said that as he was shoving $20 bills into a suitcase before heading for the airport. Apparently, he had told Comedy Central they could either pay me in gold bullion or nothing — and they chose the second one.
Wired.com: What would you like to tell the world about your show? Are its comedians unheralded wits?
Oliver: The comedians featured on the show are all fantastic, to the point that I was frankly shocked they all agreed to do this. Maria Bamford is one of my favorite comedians in the world, Hannibal Burress is the best new stand-up I’ve seen in America, Eugene Mirman is hilarious, and Nick Kroll as “Fabrice Fabrice” makes me cry with laughter. And that is not even getting close to all the great people who are on later in the series. Essentially you can be confident in the knowledge that if you don’t like any of the acts on this show, you’ll be wrong. That is my guarantee.
Wired.com: Your work on The Daily Show is like Monty Python on meth, so I expected your first dedicated show would be a deranged sitcom.
Oliver: That is not the compliment that I think you intended it to be. Monty Python on meth would be a total mess. All of their comedic genius would have disappeared, only to be replaced with a trembling group of men, huddled terrified in the corner of a room, babbling incoherently and dribbling. In that sense, I actually agree with you: My work is like Monty Python on performance-debilitating drugs.
Wired.com: There you go. So how did you arrive at a stand-up showcase? Or did it arrive at you, with a fat check, and meth, in hand?
Oliver: The reason I did a stand-up show was partly because it’s always been something that I’ve wanted to do, and also partly because of time. The Daily Show takes up such a huge amount of my year that I don’t really have enough time to do anything as involved as a deranged sitcom. Although I must admit that it does sound intriguing.
Wired.com: You’re English. They used to screw up the world, and now just cash in when we do it. Any advice for the United States’ keeling empire, which, as you explain in the show, has been vomiting on its shoes this millennium?
Oliver: Losing an empire is an art form in itself, and it’s very easy to do badly. Try not to struggle too much; just relax and enjoy the fall. There is a quiet dignity to a well-executed plunge into the abyss, like Bill Murray’s suicidal swan dive in Groundhog Day.
Wired.com: That’s easy for you to say. You’ve already done it.
Oliver: Enjoy the view as you are hurtling past China, towards the humiliating void of becoming only the second most powerful nation on Earth. You’ll be fine; it’s actually a relief when you realize that people don’t just automatically blame you for everything anymore. And you’ll simultaneously realize how much fun it is going to be blindly blaming China for everything.
Wired.com: Like other illustrious grads of The Daily Show, including the visionary Stephen Colbert, this terrible decade has been great to you. What was the worst thing that happened in the ’00s, and what was the best? And if you say “Auto-Tune” on that last one, so help me, I will sever your British nards.
Oliver: The worst thing was the sudden and inexplicable popularity of Glenn Beck crying on camera (viewable right). The best thing was Auto-Tune. Come get me! My British nards are ready!
Wired.com: Is your podcast, like that of your countryman Ricky Gervais, the future of entertainment?
Oliver: Since I started doing a podcast called The Bugle (available on iTunes!), I have become obsessed with listening to different podcasts on my way to and from the office every day. I particularly like This American Life and The Best Show on WFMU.
Wired.com Do you tweet? Can I spam your Facebook page?
Oliver: I don’t have Twitter or Facebook, partly because I’m too busy. And partly because I do not want to open the floodgates to the waves of abuse from hard-line conservatives that I’m pretty sure would follow.
John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show premieres Friday, Jan. 8, at 11 p.m. EST on Comedy Central.
Image courtesy Comedy Central/Brad Barker
