John Oliver Thanks HBO For “Not Canceling Us” As ‘Last Week Tonight’ Continues Emmy Streak

Can Last Week Tonight with John Oliver ever be stopped at the Emmys? It seems not.

The HBO talk show once again triumphed over Saturday Night Live, continuing its streak at the Emmys to nine straight wins in a major category.

John Oliver thanked HBO “for not canceling us over the last decade”. “That was never a guarantee. I appreciate it,” he added.

Oliver also thanked his family, although in a moment that he said is going to “come back” on him, he misprounced his son’s name.

He also thanked his dog, who recently passed, saying she was at his wedding and got his family through the pandemic and two pregnancies. “This for all dogs,” he added.

This was the show’s second win under the relatively new category of Outstanding Scripted Variety Series after seven consecutive wins in the Outstanding Variety Talk Series category.

As Seth Meyers told Deadline last year, the answer to how does somebody beat John Oliver is “you just move him elsewhere”.

Last year, the TV Academy shook up the categories last year, launching Outstanding Scripted Variety Series, alongside Outstanding Talk Series and moved Oliver into the former, going head-to-head with SNL, which had won the award for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series six years in a row starting in 2017.

Twelve months ago, there was also another rival in HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show but this year, the category was down to only two nominations.

It marked the end of a strange awards season for both Last Week Tonight and SNL, given that the shows were “screened by the appropriate peer group for nomination”, which is thought to have included voters from a number of genres. The voting took place between June 28 and July 8.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver came into the Primetime Emmys with a major win under its belt from last weekend. The show picked up Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series, beating The Daily Show and SNL. It did, however, lose out in a number of the technical, production design and picture editing categories that it was nominated in.

Tonight’s win takes Last Week Tonight’s total number of Emmy wins to 30 from 68 nominations.

SNL had a solid year of nominations as well as a number of wins at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys. It won for lighting design, makeup, technical direction and camerawork, production design, hairstyling and directing across 17 nominations, well up on the nine it received last year.

In the guest actor categories, Ryan Gosling, who hosted in April, was bested by The Bear’s Jon Bernthal, and Maya Rudolph, who hosted in May, and is returning to play Vice President Kamala Harris in season 50, and Kristen Wiig, who hosted in April, were also beaten by a member of The Bear’s cast – Jamie Lee Curtis.

Bowen Yang is also nominated in Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

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