If you're feeling as if you don't know what to do amid the chaos and cascade of news since President Donald Trump began his second term Jan. 20, "Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver is feeling it too.
"That's what everyone's wrestling with, isn't it?" Oliver says. "I guess it's very helpful to have a show to process all these feelings through."
The comedian, who recently turned up on his old "Daily Show" stomping grounds for a quick Trump-related rant, is trying to figure out how things will work on the upcoming 12th season of "Last Week" (HBO, Sunday, 11 EST/PST). The show will attempt to balance the barrage of Trump headlines with its signature long-form investigative stories, in a world where Trump's actions can suck all the air out of a room on a news-based late-night comedy show.
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"This may (age) very badly," he says, "but I'm hoping that we will be able to do more of those timeless stories because we'll be able to contain the chaos."
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Oliver caught up with USA TODAY in a phone interview to talk about the new season, how he's personally coping with a second Trump term he was actively rooting against, and how he wants to reassure his viewers without giving "false hope."
"I don't know how that's going to end up," he says. "We're going to try our best."
Question: A lot of people, many of whom are your viewers, are feeling confused and aimless since Trump took office again. What do you say to people who ask you, "What do we do now?"
Answer: I think that's what we're (struggling) with at the moment. For our last show of last year, we were trying to meet people where they were. We definitely don't want to give false hope; there's lots of that right now. So yeah, I don't know. That's what we're tackling this week. We're trying to land on something that is uplifting in a way that you can stand on. (We can't say) everything is going to be all right when clearly it is not.
At a time when people are feeling so isolated and hopeless, it is kind of nice, even if you feel hopeless, to not feel isolated. We get to work on this together and talk it out and try and frame it in a way that feels helpful rather than helpless.
How are you going to address all the news since you've been away and Trump took office? There's been so much.
Since our last show we've spent most of our time writing stories which are more in the mold of timeless issues that are not contingent on what this administration is doing. We will be able to do those throughout the year. It's just right now you feel like you have to deal with what's right in front of you before you can get to any of those.
We generally don't like to follow what's happening in the news of the week, but that's harder to do when the administration is this chaotic. Hopefully going forward we'll be able to contain the chaos of the Trump administration at the start of the show, and then the main body of it can be left for the more systemic issues which we're more interested in covering, showing people things they haven't seen before rather than stuff they're seeing all the time.
In your final episode of 2024 you mentioned a wish you had for 2025 was "less Elon Musk." That hasn't exactly turned out the way you were hoping.
(Laughs.) I think I might just stop wishing for things.There's a genie with a very sick sense of humor somewhere. I don't see us getting any less Elon Musk anytime soon. We're getting more and more of him to a medically inadvisable degree.
Do you foresee more pushback on your content from your corporate parents (HBO is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery) in this new environment?
Definitely we will continue to behave like there is nothing that we can't talk about. That's how we've operated for the last 11 years. And that's that's certainly how we're going to continue doing it.
How was going back to the 'Daily Show' earlier this week and reuniting with Jon Stewart?
It felt like going through a portal to when I first came to this country in 2006. It was amazing and fun just how seamlessly I felt like I fit in there. I got to walk in thinking, "Oh, I could be a correspondent again!" There's so still so many people that work there that were there when I was there. It was almost like I lost a decade of my life. Was like I never left. It's. It's a nicer office now, physically. That's the main difference.
Watch:John Oliver makes surprise return to 'The Daily Show,' reunites with Jon Stewart
Is this Sunday's premiere the hardest episode you've ever written?
No way. No, no, no. I would say there there are many, many harder episodes to list that we've had to write in the past.
That's something.
Yeah, it's something. Sometimes you can feel better just by reminding yourself that things have technically been worse. It's not the most uplifting message. I'm not sure I've ever said anything that sounds more British. That's a British kind of optimism: "Remember, things have been worse! They're not good now, but they have been worse." It's like the British version of a sports coach's speech to a team. "Yes, you're losing 7 (to zero), but you could be losing by 20. Now get out there and do your best!" At least you know it's built on something real.
