How Jimmy Kimmel inspired John Oliver to share his own son's health scare

Jimmy Kimmel made headlines last May when he revealed his infant son Billy's rare health condition, requiring open-heart surgeries, as part of an impassioned plea for improved healthcare.

A month later, his late-night rival John Oliver was inspired by Kimmel to do the same. In a June 25 segment on HBO's Last Week Tonight, Oliver ended a lengthy rebuttal of the anti-vaccine movement by noting his son (Hudson, now 2), "was born prematurely following a very difficult pregnancy" by his wife, Kate. "I was worried about his health, and I'm still worried about his health a lot. But we are vaccinating him fully, on schedule."

More:John Oliver makes case for vaccines using infant son's health struggles

This week, as the show prepares to return for a fifth season Sunday (11 ET/PT),  Oliver reflected for the first time on that choice in an interview with USA TODAY.  

More:John Oliver on 'Last Week Tonight' return, and that infamous sitdown with Dustin Hoffman

"I very rarely do anything like that, because I'm emotionally very closed in, but I was so staggered by what Jimmy Kimmel had done, and I was so floored by how brave and how funny he was and how cathartic it was to me," he explained.  "My instinct in going through a very difficult period after that pregnancy was the British way: not to talk about it at all and to bury it and hope it all goes away.  But it felt like such an incredibly generous thing to do (for Kimmel) to share that experience, it was really meaningful to me because it kind of made me feel like through the anxieties and stresses, that you're not going through that alone."

He says, "It was not something that came remotely naturally" to him, but as with Kimmel, it put a human face on a potent issue. "It felt like, in a piece when we're trying to reach out to people's anxieties, it might be meaningful to say, 'I'm as panicked about everything as anyone is, but we did this.' ... It felt like there was a tangible value" to revealing his own family's struggle, "and the Jimmy Kimmel thing really solidified it in my mind. And it was personally very helpful to me watching him suffer publicly. And it was funny." 

In a separate interview, Kimmel said he appreciated the compliment, and returned it.

"He definitely has taught me many, many things I did not know about in an entertaining way, and I think that's very valuable," Kimmel says. "It's the same reason they make medicine for children flavored like bubble gum. Sometimes it still tastes like medicine, and in John Oliver's case, it tastes like bubble gum."