How John Oliver Mixes Comedy and Serious Issues When There’s So Much Crazy ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’  

What do you call a man who has 19 Emmys, nine Producers Guild Awards, seven WGA Awards, three Peabodys, a Grammy and whose political satire has influenced U.S. legislature? Certainly not “just another comedian.” John Oliver is all that and more.

The state of American politics for the last handful of years has left many feeling like we’re trapped in a bad TV show, in which twists and turns are so crazy that it’s hard to believe it’s real. Although that could be a gift of endless material for comedians, Oliver sees it quite differently.

“It’s not necessarily a gift that you want, to be honest,” says the executive producer and host of “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” which has six Emmy nominations. “Technically, it’s a gift, but it’s not a great one. I think that the tendency is often to think that it writes itself. I promise you, it doesn’t. Everything moves so fast nowadays, you can get first-take jokes online very quickly, so you have to be writing not the most obvious joke for anything to have any kind of surprise factor. On top of that, things are very bleak,” he adds. “When you’re writing jokes, you want to try and find a way to deal with that bleakness that isn’t kind of fiddling while Rome burns.”

The British import first made it into the homes of America in 2006 as a correspondent on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” There, his smart, funny, biting but always very passionate comments about government opened eyes previously closed and is credited with inspiring legislators to make changes or, as Time magazine called it, “the John Oliver Effect.” That notion makes him laugh. “I think [the John Oliver Effect] might mean different things to different people. I think for some people that ‘effect’ is being depressed.”