John Oliver doesn’t think a British version of Saturday Night Live is a good idea.
While appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers, the SNL alum asked Oliver what he thought about the UK adaptation of the NBC late-night sketch show.
“It sounds like a terrible idea,” Oliver said.
Meyers asked the Last Week Tonight host to explain why he didn’t think a British version of SNL.
“It just sounds like a bad… We have had sketch comedy before,” Oliver noted. “And it just feels like Saturday Night Live is such a unique group. It’s a cult.”
He continued, “I’m trying to not say the word — It’s a cult. I don’t know how you can impose that cult on to the UK.”
Oliver explained that the most cult-like thing about SNL was that they have to stay up all night on Tuesday.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing a cult leader would make you do.”
Oliver joked that “it’s been proven that SNL is the outlier. It doesn’t have to be dictated to the day that you must not sleep on that day or the great leader will be irritated.”
In 2021, Deadline reported that Sky was working on a British version of SNL, and in April 2024, the Comcast-owned network finally ordered the show to series. The UK adaptation of SNL will premiere in 2026 with creator Lorne Michaels attached as an executive producer, with the show being produced by his Broadway Video and Universal Television Alternative Studio’s UK production team.
Watch John Oliver’s full interview on Late Night in the video below.
