With the writers strike officially over, Last Week Tonight returned on Sunday where John Oliver wasted no time calling out the studios for not negotiating a deal with the writers (and actors) sooner. The fiery late night host spent the bulk of his remarks praising writers and the WGA for holding strong over the past five months, but Oliver could not hold back his anger at how long it took for the AMPTP to do what it should’ve done from the very start.
“So the Writers Guild went on strike and thankfully won, but it took a lot of sacrifices from a lot of people to achieve that,” Oliver said via The Hollywood Reporter. “And while I’m happy that they eventually got a fair deal and immensely proud of what our union accomplished, I’m also furious that it took the studios 148 days to achieve a deal that they could have offered on day f*cking one. But hopefully, this might encourage others, from auto workers to Starbucks baristas to health care providers, whether they are in unions or would like to be, to find power in each other.”
Oliver also took time to praise the writers for powering through the arduous ordeal that was well worth the effort.
“It was an immensely difficult time, not just for them but for everyone else working on this show and many others who could no longer do their jobs,” the Last Week Tonight host said. “And to be clear, this strike happened for good reasons. Our industry has seen its work severely squeezed in recent years. You’ve probably seen stories about writers and actors whose work you may even recognize, routinely not making enough to qualify for health insurance or afford basic needs.”
In a show of solidarity, Oliver wished for the best for the still striking actors to “take what the writers achieved and leverage it to win fair contracts for themselves too.”
“Because the truth is, it takes many people working really hard to make film and TV, all of whom deserve a piece of the pie and for the actors in particular, they cannot come back to work soon enough,” Oliver said in conclusion. He then turned his attention to plowing through all of the news stories he missed including King Charles coronation, the Titan submersible, and of course, Lauren Boebert’s Beetlejuice groping scandal.
“This was Beetlejuice. A show that is quite loudly about death,” Oliver quipped. “I’m just saying, if you’re gonna get your nipples tweaked and your pipes squeaked, you save that shit for Fiddler [on the Roof] like a goddamn adult.”
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)