page_title: John Oliver
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: John Oliver / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: photo by “Neil Grabowsky / Montclair Film Festival”
context_page_description: John William Oliver is a British comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. Oliver started his career as a stand-up comedian in the United Kingdom. He came to wider attention for his work in the US on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as its senior British correspondent from 2006 to 2013. Oliver won three Primetime Emmy Awards for writing for The Daily Show and was its guest host for an eight-week period in 2013. In addition, Oliver co-hosted the satirical comedy podcast The Bugle with Andy Zaltzman, with whom Oliver had previously co-hosted the radio series Political Animal, and hosted John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show on Comedy Central from 2010 to 2013. He has also acted on television, most notably in a recurring role as Ian Duncan on the NBC sitcom Community, and in films, notably voice-over work in The Smurfs, The Smurfs 2, and the remake of The Lion King. He is now a naturalized US citizen.
  Since 2014, Oliver has been the host of the HBO series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
context_section_description: Oliver lives in New York City with his wife Kate Norley, an Iraq War veteran who served as a United States Army medic. Oliver has said that they met at the 2008 Republican National Convention; he was doing a piece for The Daily Show and Norley was campaigning with Vets for Freedom. She and other veterans hid Oliver, the other correspondents, and the camera crew from security. The two married in October 2011, and have two sons, one born prematurely in 2015 and one born in 2018. Oliver occasionally wears a 1st Cavalry Division lapel pin – his wife's unit in Iraq. He has a younger sister who lives in Australia.
  Oliver's immigration status placed certain constraints on what he could do in his adopted country, but also provided him with comedy material as he poked fun at the opacity and occasional absurdity of the process of obtaining US residency. Oliver was one of the many writers on the picket lines during the Writers' Guild strike, which brought The Daily Show to a halt; he appeared on the show upon its resuming production on 7 January 2008. During a sketch, he pointed out that he was then in America on a visitors' visa that requires him not to strike while the show is in production, as violation of the terms of the visa would be grounds for deportation. When asked about his residency status in early 2009, Oliver said, "It's an ongoing, and slightly unsettling, battle to be honest. I tried engraving 'Give me your tired, your poor, and your aspiring comic performers' into the base of the Statue of Liberty, but apparently that's not legally binding."
  In an episode of The Bugle released 2 November 2009, and recorded on 30 October 2009, Oliver announced he "finally got approved for [his] green card" (for US residency), noting that now he can "get arrested filming bits for The Daily Show". Oliver says he was given a scare when applying at the United States embassy in London, when an immigration officer asked, "Give me one good reason I should let you back in to insult my country?" which the officer followed up with, "Oh, I'm just kidding, I love the show". Since then, he has referred to Americans as "us" or "you" based on what each segment has demanded. Oliver became a US citizen on 13 December 2019.
  Oliver's philanthropy includes an on-air giveaway in which he forgave over $15 million of medical debt owed by over 9,000 people. He purchased the debt for $60,000 and forgave it on his show of 4 June in 2016.
  Since moving to the United States, Oliver has been a fan of the New York Mets. Oliver has said that being a New York Yankees fan would be the "wrong thing to do morally".
caption: Oliver and Norley in 2016
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