Well, this isn’t the best look…
In his years hosting Last Week Tonight, comedian John Oliver has done an amazing job giving brief, informative, and hilarious monologues about any number of topics. Quite often these include bashing the greed and callousness of big corporations — even the parent company he works for, Warner Bros Discovery! This gave him a real likable quality, like he was really giving it to those rich f**ks who don’t care about the little guy. And now… this.
So the news came out last year the weekly news program was renewed for three more years — yay, right? Well, not for Oliver it seems. According to Matthew Belloni‘s Puck newsletter on Thursday, he was furious about the contract he ended up with.
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Three separate sources told Belloni while the deal looks like a ton of money for Oliver:
“…given the overall contraction in TV and the fiscal restraints at HBO parent Warner Bros. Discovery, the new Oliver deal actually penciled out to about the same salary or even a slight reduction, depending on how you look at it.”
What is that salary? $30 MILLION per year! Yeah, a million bucks per episode, with a contract to do 30 per year. $30 mil. A nice chunk of change. The problem? It’s basically the same as last year, and Oliver thinks he deserves more.
We joke with that gif of Dudley Dursley, but the way Belloni relays it, this wasn’t far off! He heard Oliver threw an absolute s**t fit and FIRED his agents at WME. All because he couldn’t get more than 30 mil. Belloni writes:
“Oliver thought he deserved more… and maybe he did. But more likely, this seems like another recent example of a top-tier talent punishing his representatives for the new realities of the marketplace.”
The journalist quipped:
“There’s probably a good joke to be made about a TV host who positions himself as a man of the people yet privately throws a tantrum when his own insanely high salary isn’t quite high enough for his liking, but John would do that joke way better, so I’ll pass.”
We have to agree. We’re all for getting that bag, but the idea of this guy screaming at his colleagues because $30 million isn’t enough? We’re going to have a hard time not picturing that the next time he goes after a big greedy corporation…
[Image via Last Week Tonight/YouTube.]
