Exclusive: Days of Our Lives Star Reveals John Oliver Requested the ‘Whole’ Soap Opera Experience — And Boy, Did He Get It!

Last Week Tonight host John Oliver may be known for sharp political commentary, but his upcoming Days of Our Lives debut proves he is ready to embrace a very different kind of drama.

In March, Oliver put out the call to be cast on a daytime soap, and the request was met with a three-episode arc as “Z” on General Hospital that aired in July, and his appearance on Days of Our Lives on Thursday, August 11, Wednesday, August 12, and Friday, August 14. This time around, he will play “Devlin St. John.”

Dan Feuerriegel (EJ DiMera) goes toe-to-toe with Oliver in the scenes that were filmed in June, and he revealed exclusively to Soaps.com that the cast and crew welcomed him to Salem with a full soap-opera experience.

“He wanted the whole thing. From my recollection, he wanted a wig. He wanted a ridiculous name, and he wanted to slap or be slapped,” Feuerriegel divulges.

When pressed about whether Oliver did receive a daytime slap. He then adds mischievously, “We did all the things. Everything you would think cliché in a soap, we did. I got slapped. I slapped.”

Did EJ finally meet his match in Oliver’s Devlin St. John? Well, Feuerriegel seems to think so.

“So, I think intellectually, absolutely. Devlin St. John was a match for EJ, but EJ was sick,” he continues. “He was operating from a little bit of a lesser area, but he was fantastic. It was wonderful to work with him.”

Since Days of Our Lives films almost a year in advance, the show made an accommodation for Oliver to appear in episodes that had already been filmed — quite the tribute to the writing team!

Feuerriegel also praises Oliver for being “very prepared” considering he had “an absolute gargantuan amount of dialogue to get through.” He found the talk show host to be “warm,” “friendly,” and “very, very professional.” But the thing that surprised Feuerriegel the most?

“How tall he was,” he responds. “When I saw him in person, when I first met him, he had the wig on. So it was kind of like a character of John Oliver. And then in the mornings when he came in, and I saw him without the wig, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s John.”

There’s no word if Devlin St. John will become a frequent visitor of Salem, but Oliver officially checked off every soap opera box during his visit — a wig, an absurd name, and a good, old-fashioned daytime slap.