As ‘Last Week Tonight’ Wins Seventh Consecutive Late-Night Emmy, John Oliver Knows How Lucky He Is

Peter White
·2 min read
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John Oliver’s winning streak at the Emmys continues.

HBO’s Last Week Tonight won its seventh consecutive Emmy in the Outstanding Variety Talk Series category.

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The weekly show beat The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Oliver thanked his cast and crew as the chyron on the screen joked about saying hello to Oscar Isaac.

“Thank you to HBO as well. We know how lucky we are to get to make the exact show that we want exactly the way that we want to make it whether that’s making a Korean subway drama or blackmailing Congress over data brokers or staging an elaborate cabbage wedding. We know how lucky we are,” he said.

Given his streak, Oliver added what everyone else was saying. “[The sign] is saying stop now in big letters and I don’t know whether that’s about this speech or in general but either way, it’s a fair point.”

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has won every year since The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ended. It also picked up the award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series at last week’s Creative Arts ceremony, in addition to winning Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video Control For A Series.

Oliver’s win comes as the TV Academy is likely to shake up the category over the coming months, alongside the Variety Sketch category.

There’s been a lot of behind-the-scenes drama over the last twelve months when it comes to late-night and the Emmys.

Deadline revealed earlier this year that the Outstanding Variety Talk Series category won back its fifth nomination slot for this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards after a group of showrunners successfully campaigned the Television Academy.

Previously, the category was set to go down to only four nominations after only 19 shows were submitted. This came as high-profile shows that many consider to be late-night shows – the likes of The Problem with Jon Stewart, Ziwe and The Amber Ruffin Show – were submitted in other categories.

Given that the variety sketch category has also been decimated and down to only two nominees – Saturday Night Live and A Black Lady Sketch Show, there’s talk that the Academy might look to find another way to combine them next year.

Late-night showrunners are keen to separate the weekly shows such as Last Week Tonight from the nightly shows given that they air considerably more episodes each year.

This year, also saw Seth Meyers enter the awards conversation with his NBC show Late Night picking up its first nomination in the main category.

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