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‘Last Week Tonight’ Picks Up Sixth Late-Night Emmy In A Row; John Oliver Was Rooting For ‘Conan’, Pays Tribute To Norm Macdonald

Peter White
·3 min read

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver continued its Emmy streak by picking up its sixth straight win in the Outstanding Variety Talk Series category. The HBO series beat The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and Conan to snag the award.

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Oliver said, “I think like many of us in the room I was rooting for Conan so this is bittersweet. Thank you, Conan for 30 years of inspiring comedy writers.”

The Brit also thanked his producers and HBO as well as his staff, who he said tonight was the first time that he’s seen some of them in 18 months.

He also paid tribute to Norm Macdonald, who died earlier this month. “This is an award for late-night comedy, no one was funnier in the last 20 years than Norm Macdonald on late-night comedy, so if you have any time in the next week, do what I did and spend some time watching YouTube clips of Norm and Conan, because it doesn’t get better than that.”

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Oliver has won this category every year since the Outstanding Variety Series was separated into two categories except in 2015 when The Daily Show with Jon Stewart won.

Last Week Tonight also won for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series earlier in the show.

Last week, it also won for Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork and Video Control at the Creative Arts Emmys and was nominated for a total of seven awards this year including Outstanding Sound Mixing, Outstanding Picture Editing For Variety Programming, Outstanding Production Design For A Variety Series, Reality or Competition Series, and Outstanding Directing For A Variety Series.

Many were rooting for Conan O’Brien, whose eponymous series, which ended in June, scored a surprise nomination after the former host of The Tonight Show left late-night after 28 years.

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Jimmy Kimmel, this week, told Howard Stern that he hoped that Conan would win.

“We would love to win the Emmy. I just know we’re not going to win the Emmy, so I think it would be a nice thing [if Conan wins]. Especially amongst comedians and his peers, he is thought of as one of the greats,” Kimmel added. “I think [an Emmy win is] certainly deserved. I know the Emmys isn’t a lifetime achievement type situation, but I do think that Conan—not only was he really funny and very consistent, which is hard—he stuck to his guns.”

O’Brien has even joked about Oliver’s success on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast in 2019. O’Brien called his winning streak “ridiculous,” Oliver responded, “It’s objectively ridiculous, it’s indefensible.”

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