During the final “Last Week Tonight” episode of the year, John Oliver devoted an entire 30-minute segment to rehashing the past 12 months in the life of Elon Musk, billionaire and owner of X (formerly known as Twitter).
Musk has had a particularly fraught 2023, which started with the removal of verified status from legacy blue-check holders and ended with him telling advertisers, who began to pull their spending from X when Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory, to “go fuck yourself.”
Oliver began his roast by calling Musk “a man who can pull off pretty much any bad-guy-in-a-movie look.” As different images of Musk flashed by on the screen, Oliver threw out some comparisons.
“There’s Lex Luthor, posing for the cover of Metropolis Maniacs Monthly. There’s ‘Why no Mr. Bond, I and my child bride expect you to die,’” Oliver said in reference to a photo of Musk and his former partner, Grimes.
“There’s ‘I just bought your media company, I’m about to strip you for parts.’ There’s space’s first racist sheriff,” Oliver continued. “And finally, the less fuckable reimagining of Billy Zane’s character in ‘Titanic.’ Truly, the man has range.”
In James Cameron’s 1997 epic, Zane played Caledon Hockley, the wealthy fiancé of Rose Bukater (Kate Winslet), who she is being forced to marry to solve her family’s financial problems. Oliver made the joke while showing a photo of Musk’s Met Gala outfit from last year, where he wore a similar tux to the one Hockley sported in the film.
After playing the aforementioned clip of Musk telling off advertisers, Oliver riffed on Musk’s outfit, which consisted of a black shirt and bomber jacket.
“It’s hard to say what’s most embarrassing there, the fact that the world’s richest man is playing the, ‘You’re not breaking up with me, I’m breaking up with you’ card, or that he’s doing it to confused silence while wearing a jacket from Ralph Lauren’s mid-life crisis collection,” Oliver said. “He’s clearly going for bad boy there, but ended up looking more like red-pilled Chip from ‘Rescue Rangers.’”
Watch Oliver’s full roast of Musk below.