A Word With: John Oliver, ‘Competing Against People Sleeping’
Q. This election is supposed to be a late-night host’s dream. Do you feel compelled to cover it?
A. We really don’t feel compelled to do anything. We’ll probably end up doing much more about the process of the election than the personalities involved. There’s plenty of places you can go to get stuff about the personalities. We’re more interested in the election architecture, which is underpinning this entire yearlong circus now.
.. We are so late to that process we don’t get to do any of that. It’s almost helpfully not within our reach. So, instead we can be proactive and go off to the things that we are interested in. It was a huge luxury last year to not have to talk about the election.
.. Q. Do you see the other late-night shows as your competition?
A. We’re on a different night at a different time. We are not competing against them at all. We’re competing against people sleeping. Our main competition is drowsiness at the end of the week.