‘I could get shot by the left or the right’

Don’t expect Bill Maher to do stand-up comedy any time soon.

The Real Time host opened up about his reasons for quitting stand-up during a conversation with guest Patton Oswalt on Maher’s podcast, Club Random; chief among them was his safety amid a polarized political climate.

“I feel like it was a great choice, because I don’t want to be out there in this country in this political atmosphere,” he told Oswalt. “I could get shot by the left or the right. I mean, it’s just, it’s a good time to not be out there.”

Plus, Maher pointed out, he released his 13th HBO special, Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This?, earlier this year, and he said, “I feel like that’s a good body of work.”

Speaking of his specials, “I felt they basically got better as they went along, and I feel like the last one was the best one, which is a good way to get off.”

Maher also said “a number of things” have contributed to his decision, including getting “tired of the travel, obviously,” and getting “tired of being twice as funny as people who were selling twice as many tickets as me.”

He added that part of that is “because I’m on TV every week” with his HBO show, which he’s hosted since 2003, but, he added, “not that I didn’t sell a lot of tickets and, you know, do great theaters, but I didn’t sell arenas and some people did…frankly, are not that great. But, you know, when the audience is 35 to 45, they don’t want to see somebody 70.”

Maher’s new comments echo what he told Jerry Seinfeld in May 2024, also on his podcast. “That leads me to something I feel nervous about telling you…. After this year, I’m going to stop doing [standup],” he told Seinfeld at the time. “I could go back. I don’t want to make a big announcement or something. I’m doing a special at the end of the year. It’ll be my 13th for HBO. That’s a lot.”

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

Still, despite telling Seinfeld he planned on being done with stand-up comedy, he admitted that he was hesitant to make any official declaration because of how significant the medium has been to his career over the years.

“After 40 years, that’s why I don’t want to make an announcement like, ‘This is my final…,'” he said. “I might change my mind. It might be like cutting off a limb, and I have to go back to it.”

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly