NEW YORK — Since 2006, John Oliver has proved his mettle as a phony journalist on “The Daily Show.”
Serving in numerous “reporting” roles on the spoof newscast, but chiefly as senior British correspondent, the Birmingham, England-born Oliver is schoolboyish, poker-faced and emphatic in explaining America to itself.
He’s says that his accent from across the pond makes anything he says, however off-kilter, sound authoritative here in the New World.
Recently Oliver said a simple “yes” to his boss, Jon Stewart, who means to take the summer off to make a feature film and asked Oliver to fill in for him at “The Daily Show” anchor desk.
“I’ll say ‘yes’ to anything he wants me to do,” Oliver said at the “Daily Show” offices in midtown Manhattan. “I owe him so much — he brought me over here (to the U.S.) seven years ago — so I’ll do anything he wants, whether it’s hosting his show or operating as a drug mule between here and Bogota.
“As it happens,” Oliver said, looking relieved, “what he wanted was just hosting this show.”
In the coming months, Stewart will be directing and producing “Rosewater” from his own script based on a book by Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was falsely accused of being a spy and imprisoned by the Iranian government in 2009 while covering Iran’s presidential election.
And starting Monday, Oliver will preside on “The Daily Show” (which airs at 11 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays on Comedy Central).
He will substitute-anchor for eight weeks of new shows before Stewart’s return on Sept. 3.
“He’s got all the talents and he’s gonna be great,” declared Stewart in a separate interview.
In person, Oliver is as witty as he is on camera, but unlike his deadpan TV alter ego, he exhibits a toothy grin, a generous guffaw and a palpable delight in mining ideas for humor.
He jokes that he is trying to get a head start on his new responsibilities by writing scripts ahead of time.
“I’m going to try and get to August, at least, by just predicting: We’ll get a Supreme Court decision on gay marriage; we’ll guess what that’s going to be. We’ve got a royal baby coming; we’ll guess what that’s going to be.”
Oliver, 36, says his comic style was forged by early exposure to Monty Python and Armando Iannucci, a Scottish farceur who produced radio comedies, the British political TV satire “The Thick of It” and, currently, HBO’s “Veep” (and will be a “Daily Show” guest next week).
Seeking his own comic style, Oliver wanted to apply “classic British comedic lunacy to politics, trying to do something stupid with something serious.”
But starting out, he was grateful for any joke that might score him a laugh or two.
“When you start standup you are just trying to not leave the stage to the sound of your own footsteps,” he said. “You’re only thinking, ‘How do I get through this with just a soupcon of dignity?’”
Whoa! Oliver has left himself wide open to razzing by his interviewer for using a fancy word like “soupcon.” He swiftly replaces it with “iota,” but it’s too late.
That’s Brits for you: Always sounding like they know more than your average Yank.
“They sound like they do, and that’s the trick,” Oliver agreed. “But there is nothing more British than simultaneously feeling superior and inferior. You just project one, repress the other.”
Still, the record shows that Oliver attended highbrow Cambridge University. Just how smart is Oliver?
“Smart enough to appear smarter than I am,” he reasons. “I was smart enough to get into Cambridge, and I guess I was smart enough to realize that I wasn’t as clever as everyone else when I got there.”
Notably, he became part of the Cambridge Footlights comedy troupe, whose luminous alumni include Sasha Baron Cohen, Hugh Laurie, John Cleese and David Frost.
Then Stewart discovered him and brought him to these shores.
“From the day I came to ‘The Daily Show’ I couldn’t imagine not being here.” Oliver said.
“You know Jon Stewart is funny,” Oliver said. “What you don’t see is, he’s a pretty incredible manager of production as well.
“The key thing is to really keep your foot on the throat of this show so that it doesn’t just get up and walk away.”
Starting Monday, John Oliver is putting his foot down, and keeping it funny.
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