John Oliver has a message for soap opera casting directors: Call me.
The Last Week Tonight host closed out Sunday’s show with a full-throated pitch—and an on-air audition—for a role on daytime TV.
After spending most of the episode discussing the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID, Oliver pivoted in the final minutes to soap operas.
Declaring himself a longtime fan of the genre’s gloriously unhinged storytelling, Oliver rattled off a series of famously over-the-top plotlines, including demonic possession on Days of Our Lives and a drunken surgical disaster on Passions.
The genre’s anything-goes sensibility, Oliver noted, has also made soaps a magnet for celebrity cameos—from musicians like Rihanna and Snoop Dogg to actors including Elizabeth Taylor, Dick Van Dyke, and Betty White. Sometimes the guests are even more unexpected, which Oliver demonstrated with a clip from General Hospital featuring an actor playing Colonel Sanders.
But the celebrity cameo that truly caught Oliver’s attention came from a different General Hospital guest star: sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, who has portrayed the character Brick on the ABC soap since 2016.
“It is amazing to me that for nearly a decade Stephen A. Smith has been a recurring character on General Hospital and we barely heard anything about it,” Oliver said. “And I’m guessing that’s because people who know Stephen A. Smith aren’t watching soap operas, and people who watch soap operas don’t know who Stephen A. Smith is.”
He then showed a scene of Smith’s character confronting a nurse who turns out to be an assassin—ending in a shootout—before confessing the real reason he brought it up: “I am jealous.”
Oliver then made his pitch directly to the producers behind The Young and the Restless, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and Beyond the Gates.
“I’m officially offering myself to you,” Oliver said. “Write me a role and I’ll be on your set so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
Oliver did stipulate a few conditions. He doesn’t want to play himself, he said, and the character should have a ridiculous name. He also hopes the role involves something juicy—“murder or slapping or being slapped, or being someone’s long-lost something”—and ideally a dramatic close-up.
To prove he’s up to the task, Oliver then staged his own soap-style audition, reenacting Smith’s General Hospital scene with the suspicious nurse.
“I’m available,” Oliver concluded. “I’m willing to travel, and I want this more than you can possibly understand.”
The segment ended with a final twist: a cameo from Jack McBrayer as Colonel Sanders, reprising the fast-food founder’s soap opera appearance before turning the gun on Oliver in true melodramatic fashion.
Watch Oliver’s full pitch to casting agents below, and keep your eyes peeled for the Last Week Tonight host’s soap opera debut. We all know it’s only a matter of time.
Working on a Daytime Soap Opera is demanding. They are artists who work almost year round.
B& B out of the loop? That would the best given the international audience it has.
But to be honest, i would much rather a 3 soap crossover of all CBS’s shows. That would be awesome.
In any case whichever soap/s that nab John Oliver, we’ll be watching. It also needs to be a meaty enough role so that he can in the running for a guest actor Daytime Emmy. 🙏
Terrible reaction to Stephen A. Smith’s scenes.
Chris Russo, from Sirius/ESPN, the day after those GH scenes hysterically said that Stephen A. Smith is no Sidney Poitier.
John Oliver has no business on American soap operas unless it’s a character like Mr. Bentley from ‘The Jeffersons’ -Insufferable, annoying, British man in America with bad teeth. He wouldn’t even need to act.
Is a racist sequel to “The Love Guru” in the works if he’s begging for work?
If Oliver wants to appear in soaps, he should go back to England….Eastenders, Hollyoaks, Coronation Street etc. playing an ugly, smelly, dirty creature with hideous teeth.
Nothing but whiny grievances on your part, Mucky Boy! Of course, you could always lobby Gutfool! to play the role of a white trash loser that gets beaten up for uttering the n-word at black vops!
Cops, that is!
John Oliver should play a role on DaysOfOurLives as BrianBlack who gets slapped by all the cast for missing his brother(JohnBlack) funeral.