John Oliver Enlists All-Stars For Dramatic Reading Of A Deposition

When you don't have the video of a deposition you get creative.

John Oliver (Photo via YouTube screenshot)

In the latest episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes on the opioid crisis. Yes, it’s his second time addressing the issue, but as he so aptly points out, it is far from solved.

In particular Oliver focuses on the legal woes of Richard Sackler, former chairman and president of Purdue Pharma, the makers of Oxycontin. The publicity-shy Sackler has come under scrutiny in part because of the shocking things he’s said about Oxycontin, that have come out during the course of litigation. He said he wanted to cover the country in “a blizzard of prescriptions,” and that the first wave of 59 overdose deaths “could have been far worse,” and described patients that became addicted to his product as “reckless criminals.”

As shocking as those typed out words may be, Oliver knows there’s no substitute for a visual. Though the transcript of Sackler’s deposition in a case brought by the state of Kentucky has been publicly released, lawyers for Purdue are fighting the release of the video of the deposition. And so Oliver enlisted Michael Keating, Bryan Cranston, Michael K. Williams, and Richard Kind to do dramatic readings of Sackler’s deposition.

It’s both entertaining and outrageous, just as Oliver intended it to be.

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