The Daily Show’s British Correspondent John Oliver stopped by Northwestern last Friday as A&O’s winter speaker. Oliver reminded his audience that “everything’s going to be fine" while discussing the finer points of pigeons being where they’re not supposed to be, why Americans should steal things and people having confidence in the face of contradictory facts. After the show, I introduced myself (“No shit! Wow. Am I ruining your name for you? Little bit? Little bit?”) and asked him about some of his recent work on The Daily Show, his return to Community, up-and-coming comedians and why Tim Gunn is the nicest man on television.
North By Northwestern: You’ve been in America for six years now. How has your perception of America or Americans changed, if at all, in your time here?
John Oliver: The world’s perception of America’s changed a lot. I came for the last two years of the Bush presidency, and there was a lot of frustration around the world as to what America was doing, because I think what the rest of the world finds very difficult to understand is that America gets presented to the planet as a cohesive whole, that all we see is you waving flags and looking happy. So we presume that you all think the same thing. And you only need to be here for a week before realizing, “Holy shit, no one agrees on anything in this country.”
The first time I flew across the country, you have to understand how weird it is for an English person to fly for five hours and land in the same country. That makes no fucking sense to me at all. If you flew for five hours from England, you wouldn’t be in Europe anymore. You’d have left the continent and flown over 14 countries in the process. So I think the biggest thing, the biggest eye-opening thing is realizing that America is gigantic in a way that someone from a tiny island just cannot comprehend.
I love it here. And it’s hard to kind of explain to myself quite why I love it so much. English people are very cynical all the time and they just presume everything is going to be terrible. I think it’s because we lost everything, so people are just sulking now. For the rest of human history we’re just going to sulk. And I love Americans’ optimism, which can feel quite jarring to some people or annoying. American optimism in the face of disaster I find quite uplifting. At best it’s uplifting and even at worst it’s funny. I don’t know where that confidence comes from, but I love it.
NBN: Do you think you’ve taken on some of that confidence since you’ve been here? You talked about it a lot in your set.
JO: Personally, I haven’t taken it on. When you’re English, you’re brought up to just fundamentally believe that life is an unending series of failures. But I certainly admire it. And I think it’s more healthy to be positive, because why not be? I just can’t personally do that, because I came here at 29 years old. I’ve three decades of misery, and that, you just can’t turn your back on that.
NBN: Last month you did a really big piece on the U.S. cutting aid to UNESCO; you traveled all the way to Gabon. What was that experience like, seeing the country and spending time with kids there?
JO: It was pretty weird. I didn’t spend a lot of time. It was literally a 20-hour flight, we were there for maybe 42 hours, less than two days and then 20 hours back. And it was an absolutely unbelievable experience. The whole story was, when we started looking at it, just fascinating and inherently funny because it’s so bleak.
The story is that America has cut off funding to UNESCO because UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member, and we won’t fund anyone who has Palestine as a member. And then the more we were looking into it and all the jarring things that UNESCO … it’s building the Iraqi judiciary, UNESCO is training Afghan policemen how to read and write. It seems like such a stupid thing to be doing for inexplicably arcane reasons. It didn’t seem to make any sense.
The field pieces we’re doing on the show are getting a bit more ambitious now. Like, Jason Jones went to Iran. It’s really interesting and it’s an amazing opportunity to do jokes on a much bigger scale now.
I was a bit worried before, because these are six-year-old kids in a rough part of Gabon. You wonder how much irony makes sense to a six-year-old. So I said to our translator, “Please tell them that this is a joke. This is just for fun, this is going to be a joke, I’m going to try and take their books from them.” And then as soon as you try and took a book and pull it away, one starts laughing and they all start laughing and then you can just chase them round and round in circles. It was an amazing experience and I’m proud of those two pieces.
NBN: Is it intimidating to interview somebody like the Press Secretary of Gabon? What is your approach to get comedy out of that?
JO: That’s the first time I’ve had to use a translator, and it definitely makes it more difficult. I mean, there are certain jokes you can do about that, but it makes it a little more difficult. Because there are rhythms in comedy that then get destroyed, because there is a third person in the room who is saying everything that you are saying and everything that they are saying. So it is definitely a difficult challenge, but the story is so good, that we felt that we had enough juxtapositions of painful ironies that it was going to make the whole thing worthwhile.
NBN: Situations tend to occur like that on The Daily Show often, where you have to really sell a joke to the camera, but the guy you’re interviewing might be clueless or offended.
JO: Oh, they absolutely understood. They knew. We had to get invited to those places in Gabon, we had to say, "This is the story that we’re looking at. Gabon is the good guy in the story, we are going to come and insult you, that’s how we’re doing it." That’s how our show works. I think there is an international language of douchery that transcends translation.
NBN: Also on The Daily Show, Indecision 2012 is heating up. How does the environment change around the office at election time?
JO: Yeah, the pace of everything goes up. So we’ll be at the conventions again. It’s a reactive show, necessarily, because you know, you’re reacting off the news and what’s happening. So when it’s really whipping up, you do get swept along with that. This is my first time repeating an entire cycle. But the personalities are different, even if the problems are the same. So, even though it’s exhausting, you do get yourself fired up, because it’s still pretty incredible to witness up close, it’s such a circus.
NBN: Looking ahead, you’re doing voice work in an upcoming Disney XD show, Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja –
JO: How’d you know about that?
NBN: IMDb.
JO: Is it on there?
NBN: Yeah, you’re playing Coach Green?
JO: Yeah!
NBN: There’s a really talented cast: Tim Curry, Megan Mullaly, John Di Maggio, Jim Rash. Can you tell us about that?
JO: I haven’t seen any of it, but I’ve done a whole bunch of episodes, the voiceover, and it’s incredible. It’s just a kids cartoon about this ninth grader who has ninja powers. And I’m his coach who’s trying to kill him in each episode. That sounds like a cartoon, and that’s because it is. So yeah, I think it could be really funny.
NBN: And you’ve done voice work before, for Community. Did you enjoy that?
JO: Yeah, I loved it, and The Smurfs. Let’s not forget The Smurfs. I’m Vanity Smurf. I just did the second one as well. Yeah, I think I’m barely in the first one. I think they just need someone to sound narcissistic, and the British accent is still the embodiment of narcissism. So, I think that’s how I got that. Oh, I love it because I also did a lot of radio in England, so I like voice stuff. I did this show in England called The Department, which was kind of like an audio cartoon. Loads of sound effects; that really appeals to me.
NBN: Do you think you’re going to find time to return to Community at all this season?
JO: Not this season. I can’t, I can’t get away. We couldn’t work it out. But if, fingers crossed, they’ll get another season, I’ll definitely try and do that.
NBN: And you imagine they will get another season?
JO: I hope so. People need to watch it, that’s the thing. It’s amazing how many people – it is incredible how many people love that show for how few people watch it. People come up a lot and talk to me about Community. And I say to them, “Oh yeah, so do you watch that on TV?” “No, no, I don’t watch it on TV, I watch it on Hulu.” “Well, you’re killing the thing you love.” It’s a weird crossover time where no one watches Community on television, which unfortunately is the only thing that’s measurable for whether you stay on television or not. So, yeah, it’s a problem. So I really hope that they do get re-upped.
NBN: Will John Oliver’s New York Standup Show be returning this summer?
JO: Yeah, I’ve finished it. So we’re editing it now, and it’ll be on I think in June.
NBN: What stand-ups out there do you enjoy who you think we should be looking out for?
JO: I’ve been taking this guy Mike Lawrence around with me. He’s been opening for me. And from the new series, there’s this guy Michael Che who I think is absolutely fantastic. He is the most exciting one from this season, and he did the most hysterical set, and I think he could be just unbelievably – he’s already great, but he could be incredibly good. If you only watch one, it’s worth watching it for him. I don’t know if they release who’s on, but he’s really good.
NBN: What else do you enjoy on television right now, comedy or otherwise?
JO: I watch a lot of sports. I obviously watch nonstop news. I just watched the first season of Breaking Bad; I’ve been quite behind on that, yeah – turns out that’s excellent. My wife really likes Dexter. And I love Project Runway. I think Tim Gunn is the nicest man on TV. And also, I am not interested in fashion, as I think you can see. But I love how that is a reality show where people are really good. You’re so used to seeing reality shows where people are either comically shit or average. Even American Idol, you think, “They’re fine, but lots of people can sing like that.” Whereas, Project Runway, they’re really good. And I just think Tim Gunn is one of the most wonderful human beings ever to be filmed and broadcast. Yeah. So it’s a weird obsession I have with that show. It’s a weird spectrum of television from sports to Project Runway.
Oh, and my wife loves The Soup. So she was very excited that I did Community, because she loves The Soup, and she loves Chevy Chase. So that’s the thing she’s most impressed with that I’ve done.