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John Oliver embodies male beauty? The British comedian and star of HBO's Last Week Tonight -- which returns for it second season on Sunday Feb. 8 at 11 p.m. -- released a web exclusive last night (this week) detailing his attempts to audition for the 50 Shades of Grey movie, and slamming actor Jamie Dornan. The idea? To apologize to Dornan -- who stars as EL James's Christian Grey in the upcoming 2015 movie -- for starting the 'Not My Christian' hashtag. Oliver -- who also starred in Community -- also slammed 50 Shades of Grey fans, saying they're all "suburban mothers of three who have somehow never had sex before."
We're putting a new web video up tonight at 11. It will be good practice for when we come back to television on February 8th.
— Last Week Tonight (@LastWeekTonight) January 25, 2015
Oliver and Last Week Tonight had a huge impact in the show's first season, having some surprisingly long-reaching effects. As Time's Victor Luckerson reports, after Oliver aired segments on specific ideas, associated aspects of those topics were affected, including helping donations to worthy causes, highlighting net neutrality and crashing government websites in the process, and even changing legislation on civil forfeiture laws.
But last night "professional swear word sayer" Oliver night offered a less-than-sincere apology to the star of 50 Shades of Grey, Jamie Dornan... after Oliver kickstarted the
#NotMyChristian hashtag, as The Huffington Post report, "designed to protest the casting of Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey in the upcoming 50 Shade of Grey movie."
Oliver offered a typically "condescending half-hearted apology that I don't really mean," to Dornan.
"Now look," said the star, "I'm sorry if anyone was offended by my incredibly accurate evaluation of a casting choice for a movie whose target audience, going by the trailer, seems to be suburban mothers of three who have somehow never had sex before," and was as "erotic as dropping an unpeeled carrot into a paper bag."
Oliver said his problem was more with Hollywood's unimaginative casting, and that he was upset that Jamie Dornan "who specifies in handsome" had been cast, rather than a certain late night HBO host.
"It hurts not to have even been asked," Oliver said, before angrily decrying Hollywood, saying "You pass me over for the epitome of male beauty but whenever you need a caucasian foreigner or cheerful weakling, suddenly my phone's blowing up."
Watch Oliver records his audition for 50 Shade of Grey - "a movie that has already been made from a book I've never read." - as Christian Grey, deep voiced and talking about 'butt-stuff' below:
