Comedian Bill Maher Pressing Pause on Standup Due to Current Political Climate: ‘I Could Get Shot’

Bill Maher is taking a break from doing stand-up and didn’t hold back on explaining why.

The comedian, 69, admitted on the Monday, November 17, episode of his Club Random podcast that he has no interest in hitting the road again after releasing his 13th HBO special earlier this year. The travel has worn him out after four decades of touring, but Maher said the bigger issue is the current political climate.

“I don’t want to be out there in this country, in this political atmosphere,” he told guest Patton Oswalt. “I could get shot by the left or the right. It’s a good time to not be out there.”

He also joked that he was tired of being “twice as funny” as other comics who sell “twice as many tickets” while pointing out that performers in their thirties and forties simply draw bigger crowds.

“They don’t want to see somebody who’s 70,” he said.

Maher’s most recent special, Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This?, debuted in January but even so, he told Oswalt he isn’t looking to get back on a tour bus anytime soon.

His feelings echoed comments he shared earlier this year when he sat down with CNN and pushed back on rumors that he plans to walk away from Real Time.

Maher insisted he will stay put and said the network will have to drag him off the set. He has hosted the long-running series since 2003 and launched his Club Random podcast in 2022.

“I am stopping doing stand-up,” Maher explained, noting that the grind of touring finally caught up with him. “But for those people who say to me, ‘Why don’t you just do it a little bit?’ You can’t do it a little bit. Stand-up is like being a boxer. You have to be in training. You can’t just walk up there and do it.”