Bill Maher Says Carrot Top Is Like ‘Tom Cruise As A Prop Comic’

Tom Cruise is famous for being his own stuntman, but does he have the courage and creativity to be his own props department as well?

If you asked the average comedy fan to name the comedian whom they would describe as “the Tom Cruise of Comedy,” they’d probably be hard-pressed to come up with a comic on the same level of preposterous success as the the Scientologist whose films have grossed over $8 billion in his 40-year career. The only likely comparison would be someone like Jerry Seinfeld, a comedian who became so culturally pervasive and financially rewarded that he’s loosely worthy of the title of “The Tom Cruise of Comedy, If Tom Cruise Never Did a Damn Thing Worthwhile Without Christopher McQuarrie.”

Bill Maher, however, has his own answer to that question. On the most recent episode of Maher’s Club Random podcast, he told Las Vegas mainstay Carrot Top, “You’re like if Tom Cruise was a prop comic.” Apparently, Les Grossman’s Diet Coke can doesn’t count as a prop.

“Some of your props are elaborate,” Maher told Carrot Top before making the comparison, commending the engineering of the prop comic’s best gags. In response to Maher’s compliment, Carrot Top explained one of the most technologically demanding gags he’d done which topically addressed former Republican Senator Larry Craig’s infamous 2007 scandal wherein he solicited sex in a men’s bathroom by tapping his foot on the floor. 

The story broke just days before a scheduled Tonight Show appearance, so Carrot Top and his prop master fabricated a briefcase with a prosthetic leg attached on the backside that could lower itself and tap its foot, wowing the in-studio audience and the show’s then-host Jay Leno. While the anecdote impressed Maher and presumably reinforced the comparison to Cruise, I’d have to argue that the prop disproves the parallel. Making jokes about closeted homosexuality isn’t really Cruise’s thing — he’s much more used to them coming at his expense.