Bill Maher isn’t about to tackle Trump’s second term the way he did Trump’s first. At least his intention is not to tackle Trump’s second term the way he did Trump’s first.
As he declares in his recently released HBO special, Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This?, Donald Trump got the election, but he won’t get Maher’s mind. With the twenty-third season of Real Time with Bill Maher set to premiere Jan. 17, Maher vows to keep himself and his on-air devotion to the incoming president in check. “He’s going to say a lot of crazy shit. That’s just who he is,” Maher tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m just going to cordon those things off to the funny parts of the show where we just laugh at it, but I’m not going to take it seriously because it doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.”
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But don’t confuse Maher with every other Trump-bashing, Hollywood liberal. As he outlines in his special, as he has on Real Time, he isn’t exactly pleased with the ultra “woke”-ness of the left either. Instead, Maher has found his sweet spot somewhere in the middle, he explains, a fanbase that he believes hasn’t been ideologically captured until now. Just before pockets of Los Angeles were engulfed in flames, he talked about his admittedly controversial place on the political (and Hollywood) spectrum.
You’ve said it was important for you to perform your latest special before an ideologically mixed audience. How do you accomplish that?
I think they do it for me. My television show advertises what I’m doing, and then people come. Now, I’ve been to places where I was worried that it was not going to be so ideologically mixed. Like, I played San Francisco last year and San Francisco is obviously pretty far left but that was a great crowd. Not what I’d call the typical San Francisco crowd. Certainly not the crowd I remember from the last time I played there. But San Francisco is a good example of a city that’s kind of had it with the far left, extreme woke-ism. They got rid of the D.A. who let crime run rampant and they do not like the poop in the streets and they do not like the fact that they got rid of merit-based testing in schools and lots of stuff that common-sense people, including liberal people, don’t want to see. So, I think San Francisco was one of the places that was more [eager] to see someone like me.
You chose Chicago to tape the special. Why there?
Building available.
It’s as simple as that?
That was the key. I love Chicago, don’t get me wrong. It’s New York without the bad attitude. But ever since the pandemic, when nobody was on tour for over a year, there’s been a surplus of people who want to tour, who didn’t tour, so it’s very hard to find a building anywhere and I was thrilled one was available in Chicago. And it provided me with the perfect kind of audience. I want Republicans to be able to laugh at Trump, who is a preposterous figure, and I want liberals to be able to laugh at woke nonsense that goes too far. And they did happily because I think that’s where a lot of the people in the middle are, and that’s who I’m talking to — people who are not ideologically captured by either side and who are happy to see someone who is willing to go after whoever is doing goofy stuff. They’re independents, Democrats, non-drooling Republicans, just people who are tired of the extremes and the extremists, and tired of the hate. I’m tired of the hate. I’m tired of half the country hating the other half. I don’t hate half the country, and you can’t get me to. So, you can threaten me as much as you want that I’m becoming more conservative, I have the same politics I’ve always had, things [in the culture] have changed.
How has your fanbase changed?
Some of these super-woke people left the building.
And presumably you’ve captured more of the right?
I don’t think the far right, but people who would count themselves as conservatives or Republicans, including people who voted for Trump. I can talk to anybody. I can be friends with anybody. I take pride in it. I mean, do you really think half the country is going to [flee] and you can just not talk to them ever again? One of the things I really object to about the left is they have this terribly exclusionary attitude. After the election, the advice we heard a lot was, “Cut off the people in your own family this holiday season who voted for Trump.” I could not disagree more with that sentiment. I understand why people don’t like Donald Trump. I didn’t vote for him either, and I never would, but I sure wouldn’t stop talking to people who did.
You’ve been very vocal about your displeasure with the far left. How has it impacted your relationships here in Los Angeles?
I was never exactly persona grata to begin with. (Laughs.) I always say I’m in show business, but I’m not of it. I’m in a very different category, kind of my own category. Am I an A-lister? No, I’m not Nicole Kidman or Timothée Chalamet, but I’m not really a B-lister either. I’m in this world that has one foot is in politics, and you have to be smart to watch my show and to be on it. There are very few people in show business who could actually do the show. Kerry Washington has done it, Ben Affleck, but they are few and far between. And most would be petrified to do it. And by the way, they’re right to be.
What is the fear, exactly?
Their publicists always say they’re afraid that they’re going to look stupid. Well, they might. I mean, that’s just not their area, I get it. And also, show people, they just perceive truth, shall we say, differently. Artists, and I love artists and I am an artist in my own way, perceive truth emotionally and I perceive it rationally. I think that’s the most diplomatic way to say it.
Have you lost friends here over your politics?
Yes, and I don’t care. I can think of one person, a former friend, in New York, actually, but he’d twisted my tail before about having Republicans on the show and just was yelling at me about how I wasn’t mean enough to Bill Barr. I was like, “What do you want me to do? Introduce him and then punch him in the nose as soon as he walks out?” I have no patience for people like that. And I was tough on Bill Barr but he is the former Attorney General of the United States, and I’m doing a show about culture and politics and the people who run this country and so I’m going to talk to him – I’m going to talk to everybody and I’m not going to prejudge. It’s what we must get back to in this country, talking to each other and not pre-judging each other.
Most of these people who you don’t agree with are not monsters. Trump may be, we’ll find out soon enough, but the people who are for him? I can’t get with you on that. I wouldn’t vote for him, but I understand that they have their reasons, and they also have their reasons why they think some of the stuff that goes on pn the left, to them, is even more dangerous and crazy than what Trump is doing. I don’t quite agree because I think the most dangerous thing that a politician can do is what Trump is doing, which is not respecting elections. I mean, it was just January 6th, and it went off smoothly but it would not have if the other party had won the election. We’d be in a civil war situation right now because there was only one party that now concedes elections. That is an asymmetry that cannot continue.
You’ve said you’d have Trump on your show…
I would love to and he’s just crazy enough to do it.
In your special, you say some version of, Trump got the election, but he won’t get your mind. You host a weekly political show, how do you intend to block him out?
By cordoning off the crazy stuff just to only parts of the show. Like, I see in the news now that Trump is thinking of annexing Canada and invading Greenland. Okay, I really don’t think this is going to happen, either one of them, and I’m just not going to chase every rabbit down the hole this time. I did that the first term. I’m just not going to do it again. When the Marines land on Greenland, wake me up and I’ll get into it on a serious level.
You launched a podcast, Club Random, so that you’d have a platform to talk to people about things other than politics. I listened to the most recent episode, which had you interviewing Jon Cryer, and it very quickly turned into a heated political debate.
Okay, let’s file that one under bad example. (Laughs.)
I’d say it was 95 percent politics. Perhaps you really can’t or don’t want to escape it?
It’s never my intention to talk politics. First of all, I have no intention. When I started the podcast, I said, “I have a TV show, this has to be the exact opposite of what the TV show is.” And it is. I mean, my TV show, I work very hard all week to make it exactly the show I want. Club Random? I barely even know who the guest is. I just walk in there, and I get high. The whole show is produced, directed and starring marijuana. I don’t know what I’m going to say. With Jon Crier, I didn’t want it to get political.
So, why did it?
Five minutes in, he said, “Kamala lost the election because America hates Black women,” and we were off to the races because, to me, he’s a nice guy and I think we left as friends, but that’s what’s wrong with this town. [At one point,] I said to him, “Look, we’ve both voted for the same person, the difference is you are why she lost.” But it’s true, and unless the Democratic party reckons with that, they’re going to lose again, and we need two viable parties. The two issues that are most important to me are the environment and safeguarding democracy and now there is no one in Washington to champion those issues, so I’m a little mad at the Democrats. That’s what you did to me. By the way, America does not hate Black women. Are there racists in this country still? Yes, of course. But wake up and look around, it is 2025, it’s a ridiculous thing to say. And the other people who were saying that she ran a perfect campaign, really? Like, when they asked her if she would’ve done anything different than Biden and she said, “I can’t think of anything”? This was not a perfect campaign, and she was far from a perfect candidate.
I’m curious: are celebrities as intimidated to come on Club Random as they are Real Time? And if not, will they be after listening to Jon’s episode?
I’m glad you brought this up so that I can try to say this to people: Club Random is never intimidating. That was an outlier. First of all, Jon is very politically astute, and obviously was completely up to talk about this because he’s very well-informed. Also, on Club Random, the guest has final cut. We will cut out anything you don’t like. This is intended to be an non-political show for people who just want to shoot the shit with me. It’s a celebrity-friendly show.
How often are you editing things out at a guest’s request?
Oh, I don’t know, I don’t get involved with that part. I have a job [Real Time] and I spend all my time working for HBO, my masters, and I’m very happy there and I want them to know that all the devotion that I’ve given them has not subsided even for one minute. This is just what I do on Wednesdays between, like, 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. I don’t know what goes on after that, but I just know the producers will absolutely accommodate anybody who doesn’t want anything out there. I just want to talk to all the celebrities who are not right for Real Time, which is most of them. My biggest problem on that show is that nobody ever wants to leave.
Well, they’re probably high…
Yeah, high and drunk and they’re talking to me and it’s fun.
You mentioned HBO being great to you, but I also imagine there is a notes process and that there are times when your hand gets slapped. I’m curious what that’s looked like in recent years.
Never.
They don’t ever try to reel you in?
Never. Nope. We had one disagreement about booking one guest once. I’m not going to say who.
Who ultimately won that fight?
They did. And that’s okay. I mean, believe me, I am fully aware how lucky I am to be at a place where they never give notes. I mean legal, sure. Legal sometimes says you have to say this or that, or you have to say alleged or whatever it is.
The late-night shows and their hosts used to be very competitive with each other. These days, they’re all friends. They do each other’s shows, several of them even hosted a podcast together during the strike. Do you feel like you’re a part of that fraternity?
No.
Is that your choice?
Some of them I don’t know at all. Some of them, like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, I know and love. But it’s so interesting, when I started doing Politically Incorrect [his previous show on ABC], they said, “You can’t do a show where you have political opinions because the audience will turn off to that.” Johnny Carson always played it down the middle. You didn’t even know who he voted for. Same with Letterman and Leno. That was the template. Now, it’s completely the opposite. The politics come first on those shows. You have to appeal to what the audience, which is a completely liberal audience, thinks — you just have to echo what they already want to believe and do believe. That’s not what I do, and I’m not going to do that. I’m going to talk to both sides and criticize both sides.
I’m being told to wrap up but before I lose you: you’re really done with standup after this special?
Yeah, I think so. I never wanted to make an announcement about it because I might go back. I’m not quitting for any reason other than I’m tired of dragging my ass out of bed on Saturday morning after working a very hard week on Real Time to go to some city and tell jokes to strangers. I love telling the jokes, but getting there and the hotels? No. And some people have said to me, “Well, why don’t you just do Vegas eight or nine times a year?” You can’t. Standup is like being a boxer. You got to be in training every day, and I’ve maintained that training schedule for 40 years and I just need a year off. Maybe I’ll go back to it, but if this is my swan song, this special, my 13th for the network, I will be very happy with that.
