John Oliver’s soap opera dream has officially reached Salem—and it came with contaminated well water, municipal intrigue, and nearly 12 minutes of screen time.
The Last Week Tonight host made his Days of Our Lives debut on Tuesday’s episode as Devlin St. John, Salem’s chief water inspector and the namesake of the Devlin St. John Memorial Sewer Plant. Yes, really.
The first of Oliver’s three Days episodes wasted little time giving him the full daytime treatment. Devlin first arrived at the office of Mayor Paulina Price, played by Jackée Harry, to discuss “the avalanche of complaints” over a contaminated well on Smith Island. Paulina, unimpressed, told him she had received “like, one or two.”
From there, Devlin moved on to Julie Olson Williams, played by Days legend Susan Seaforth Hayes, grilling her over her decision to decontaminate the Horton cabin well. “Thanks to your noble intervention, that well is now so chemically pure it’s practically holy water,” he told her. “But you haven’t just cleaned the well. You’ve obliterated the data.”
The episode also gave Oliver an apparent love interest in Rita Lesley, played by Maggie Carney, who seemed to spark with Devlin when he paid an unannounced visit to DiMera mansion:
But the biggest turn came when Devlin confronted her boss, EJ DiMera, played by Dan Feuerriegel, over a possible cover-up involving a faulty batch of the DiMera Pharma drug Corasil. Even with EJ sick in bed, Devlin pressed ahead, assuring him that, as chief water inspector, he is exposed to pathogens “on the daily” and has “the immune system of an ostrich.”
Oliver’s Days appearance follows his July turn on General Hospital as Z, the mysterious head of the World Security Bureau. Both roles grew out of a March Last Week Tonight segment in which Oliver publicly invited any daytime soap to cast him, requesting a ridiculous character name, a juicy storyline, a dramatic close-up, and preferably some slapping.
Days appears to have delivered. Feuerriegel told Soaps.com that Oliver wanted the “whole” soap-opera experience, including a wig, a ridiculous name, and a slap-or-be-slapped scenario. Meanwhile, executive producer Ken Corday told Vulture that Oliver taped three episodes in two days, with roughly 60 pages of material—and “knew it cold.”
View John Oliver’s full Tuesday appearance on Peacock. His Days arc continues Wednesday and Friday.
