Last Week Tonight With John Oliver extends Emmys winning streak for Best Variety Talk Series

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Published on September 20, 2020 09:46PM EDT

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver took home the trophy for Outstanding Talk Series at the 72nd Emmy Awards on Sunday night, furthering the show's win streak.

With the win, Oliver's HBO show extends its winning streak to five, having won in this category every year since 2016. (Only The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and the Late Show With David Letterman have more wins, with 11 and 6, respectively.)

"Thank you so much to the Academy for sending what’s technically a small bomb to my house," Oliver joked upon accepting the award. "The way this year has gone I wouldn’t be surprised if this had blown up and caused a small wildfire in New York."

In the virtual press room, he also joked, "This is different from the others as you can tell because mentally half my mind is how I’m going to clean up all of this f---ing glitter. This feels very nice. A decapitated hand gave me an Emmy out of box, that’s how I always dreamt it."

He also gave special thanks to HBO, the show's producers, his staff, and his family (shoutout to his wife who did his makeup!). "All of these variety shows have been very fortunate to be able to do our shows and not stop through the pandemic," he said. "I don’t take that lightly. We’ve been incredibly lucky and it's only because of our staff and how hard they’ve worked."

Oliver likened working on his show over Zoom to "being a passenger on a plane with the pilot passed out." But, on a more serious note, he said, "I haven’t seen my staff in six months, I miss you so much I honestly cannot wait to when we’re in the same space together whenever that is."

Oliver's show bested fellow nominees The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

See the full list of 2020 Emmy winners.

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