Everyone responded to the death of Queen Elizabeth II differently. Some waited in line for over 24 hours to see a coffin; others watched The Emoji Movie. John Oliver, meanwhile, expressed his, uh, grief with a casual remark on HBO’s Last Week Tonight — a fact, really — that was bizarrely censored in the U.K.
After joking on Monday’s episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers that he’ll appear on the show whenever a senior royal kicks the bucket to “give it the disrespect it deserves,” Oliver called it a weird time to be in Britian. “This 10 days in forced mourning, apparently, has been very, very strange,” he said, including Sky censoring his Emmy-winning series.
“All we said was that Britain is still mourning the shocking loss — right? — of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes. It’s literally not a joke,” Oliver explained. “Scientifically, it’s not a joke. That’s just a fact with a kind of d*ck-ish inflection, that’s all it is.” And yet, “they cut it out,” he continued, “which is pretty sh*tty, because apparently all we’ve heard all week is the queen had the incredible sense of humor. Just nonstop. Oh, she was so funny. Seth, she was so funny. The queen, she was razor sharp.”
The queen lived for 96 years, and no one thought to ask her about Weekend at Bernie’s. What a missed opportunity. You can watch the Late Night with Seth Meyers clip above.