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DC's Legends of Tomorrow Gets a Shout-Out From HBO's John Oliver

Here's why HBO's Last Week Tonight host John Oliver gave a shout-out to DC's Legends of Tomorrow for its Obama/Gorilla Grodd moment.

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Article Summary

  • John Oliver spotlighted Legends of Tomorrow on HBO’s Last Week Tonight during a segment on presidential libraries.
  • Oliver showed a scene where Gorilla Grodd attempts to assassinate a young Barack Obama.
  • The highlighted episode is Season 3, Episode 17: "Guest Starring John Noble," from April 2018.
  • Voice actor David Sobolov shared insight on bringing Gorilla Grodd to life during this memorable sequence.

In our defense, who could've seen DC's Legends of Tomorrow getting a shout-out coming from John Oliver during HBO's Last Week Tonight on Sunday night? The main topic was presidential libraries: what purposes they actually serve, the ballooning costs, how they're used for fundraising, and more. Just to be clear? That's a great topic that was definitely worth Oliver's scrutiny. But after addressing how much President Barack Obama's library could end up costing (at around the 18:10 mark in the episode above), Oliver paused to make his case for why some of that money needs to be spent on securing the rights to the "single-best ten seconds of TV I've ever seen" needs to be included in Obama's library. That was when our "Legends" entered the conversation.

Legends of Tomorrow
Image: HBO Screencaps

While we don't have enough time to go into all of the plot threads in play, what we can tell you is that in April 2018's Season 3 Episode 17: "Guest Starring John Noble" (directed by Ralph Hemecker and written by Keto Shimizu & James Eagan), evil, super-intelligent Gorilla Grodd looked to do some serious damage to mankind by going back in time to kill future president Barack Obama during his college years. Oliver showed a clip of when Grodd and Obama first meet, with Grodd telling an understandably shocked Obama that it's almost going to be an honor to kill him. Coming out of the clip, Oliver made sure to give proper context to what they just saw. We can't help but wonder if Oliver or someone on his staff (or more than one) is an "Arrowverse" fan.

"I felt last season on 'Legends of Tomorrow,' Grodd was mainly appearing as a fan favorite character with only a few moments of emotion, so in the spirit of 'Legends,' I played along and had fun… especially when Grodd was shrunk and locked in the jar," Gorilla Grodd actor David Sobolov shared about how he approached the scene during an interview from 2018. "My voice director, 'The Flash' and 'Legends' Co-Producer Geoff Garrett had me improv that scene and we had a blast."

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Ray FlookAbout Ray Flook

Serving as Television Editor since 2018, Ray began five years earlier as a contributing writer/photographer before being brought onto the core BC team in 2017.
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