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John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight wins award at Creative Arts Emmys

By Hector Cruz

LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 11: Cast and crew of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, winner of Writing for a Variety Series, pose in the 2016 Creative Arts Emmy Awards Press Room Day 2 at the Microsoft Theater on September 11, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 11: Cast and crew of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, winner of Writing for a Variety Series, pose in the 2016 Creative Arts Emmy Awards Press Room Day 2 at the Microsoft Theater on September 11, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images) /
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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver took home the award for best writing for a variety series at the Creative Arts Emmys.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver earned its first Emmy award over the weekend at the Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday in the variety series writing category. The HBO series is a natural successor to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, which dominated the category for over a decade.

Oliver previously won the same award three times during his time on The Daily Show, while Last Week Tonight writer Tim Carvell also has several wins under his belt thanks to his work on the Comedy Central series.

“We wrote a speech, but we’re Last Week Tonight so it’s 20 minutes long and has the f-word in it 52 times,” Oliver joked while accepting the trophy, according to Deadline.

The show’s writers joked backstage that “sometimes we’re daring people not to watch with [subject] we’re talking about,” such as everything from charter schools, to print media, to auto lending.

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Last Week Tonight beat out four other shows for the honor, including TBS’ Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Comedy Central’s Key & Peele and Inside Amy Schumer, Portlandia on IFC and the long-running NBC sketch series Saturday Night Live, which last took home the award in 2002.

Other late-night shows that won Emmys at the two-night event include Late Late Show with James Corden for best interactive program and the show’s Carpool Karaoke special in the outstanding variety special category, Comedy Central’s @midnight with Chris Hardwick, which won a juried prize for best social TV experience, and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as best guest actress in a comedy for co-hosting SNL’s Christmas episode, marking not only Poehler’s first Emmy win after 17 nominations, but also the first time two people have shared an award.

At the main ceremony on Sunday, the shows nominated for best variety talk series include Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Real Time with Bill Maher, Late Late Show, Last Week Tonight and Jerry Seinfeld’s web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The category is wide open for the first time in over a decade following the retirement of Jon Stewart from The Daily Show, and the end of The Colbert Report, which was the only other show to take home the trophy in the past 13 years.

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This year, both The Daily Show under Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show failed to get nods. Instead, Oliver seems favored in the category given the Emmys’ penchant for awarding half-hour, politically oriented talk shows, but Corden’s two wins over the weekend may be hinting at an upset in the category, and therefore, a win for the first-time nominee.

The 2016 Emmy Awards hosted by Jimmy Kimmel air this Sunday, September 18 at on ABC.

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