John Oliver

But interestingly, because having been in that process, you're there at the morning.

I understand the distinction you're making between you're doing homework, I'm doing comedy.

That time of the day, for the best comedy to happen, that time of the day has to be homework.

So what feels like an anathema when you're looking at it is, hey, this is a writer's meeting of comedy writers.

Why is no one making jokes?

And the thing is, you can get too attracted to a joke, right?

And you can try and build...

the whole day's show around a joke that you loved, whereas the truth is you need it to be foundationally solid.

You build that joke on sand, the joke you loved collapses, or you're going to do some very dicey work trying to reinforce a joke that should not be standing up.

So that is why those meetings can appear humorless if you're looking at it from the outside.

But what they are doing is building the foundations for jokes that will come later.

Yes.

I think I knew it was going to be hard.

I think I didn't know exactly what you're talking about.

I didn't know how quickly I was going to need to do a crash course in American policy.

Not just the characters, but the functions of it, right?

Where you are starting to look at the separation of powers and just the basic way that government operates.

And you realize...

as you're in meetings for months, you're thinking, I need to Google that later.

I need to Google that later.