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Bill Maher had a lot to look forward to in 2020. It was a presidential election year, so he was hopeful that the voters would oust Donald Trump from the White House in November. The month after the election would bring his 10th annual two-stop trip through Hawaii to ring in the New Year.
But his 2020 imploded just like it did for the rest of us. The left-of-center host of HBO’s “Real Time” still got to see Trump lose, but the COVID-19 pandemic kept him from making a celebratory trip to his favorite holiday destination.
The pandemic may not be completely over, but Maher is getting a second shot (at least with people who have gotten their second shot). Life has opened back up enough to allow a full-capacity, vaccinated and masked audience to see Maher and guest comics Nikki Glaser and Christopher “Kid” Reid on Maui on Dec. 30 and at the Blaisdell Concert Hall on Dec. 31.
While our nation’s outlook regarding the coronavirus has greatly improved with the availability of vaccines, Maher was less optimistic about the prospects for our democracy during a recent phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles. He detailed what he calls a “slow-moving coup” — the steps Trump and the Republican Party have taken since losing the election to make sure their attempts to overturn results are more successful in 2024 than they were in 2020.
“(Trump) is purging the Republican Party of the very people who stopped his coup last time,” Maher said. “Let’s not forget he tried every single possible way to overturn that election. He called the Secretary of State of Georgia and asked him to ‘find me more votes.’ It’s on tape. He tried the Justice Department. He tried the courts. He tried Mike Pence. … And he still hasn’t conceded!
“So this time,” Maher continued, “my worry is that he will have those people in place. That’s what he’s doing right now as we speak, behind the scenes. Replacing people (with those) who this time when he says, ‘I need you to find me 11,000 votes,’ they will say ‘done.’ And I don’t know what the Democrats do about that.”
After missing a year, this trip to Hawaii is needed more than ever for Maher, who has long said that when the year starts so does his countdown to his next visit.
When asked what his personal highlights have been over the previous nine years of shows and more than a dozen guests, he said, “It’s the trip that’s the highlight, just being there. It always makes me want to come back sometime other than New Year’s, and then of course the year starts and I get involved with everything else and it never happens … but someday when I retire.”
WHILE MAHER is the star, his Hawaii shows get taken up a level (or two or three) by his guests — both those scheduled and those who pop in as a surprise. Well-known standups such as Sarah Silverman and Jeff Ross have filled out the bill, while big-name musicians such as Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Joe Walsh of the Eagles have made unannounced appearances.
This year’s scheduled guests have little in common other than Maher’s admiration. “He’s hilarious and she’s on a rocket ship to stardom,” he said of Reid and Glaser.
Maher first noticed Glaser on the Comedy Central roasts of Rob Lowe, Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin, where she proved no topics are off limits, with uproarious sets including jokes about sex, race, suicide and the Holocaust.
Glaser was a fan of Maher’s long before he knew who she was, because her parents were such big fans.
“I grew up in a house that worshipped him and so I feel the same way,” Glaser said.
The first time they “met” was surreal. It was during the pandemic, when Glaser had moved back to the family home in St. Louis and she appeared on “Real Time” via Zoom.
Glaser had lived in Los Angeles since graduating from college more than a decade ago, but her success allows her to base herself in St. Louis. She flies out for stand-up shows and to film the HBO dating reality show she hosts (“FBoy Island”).
It wasn’t always that way, of course. Glaser grew up as a “theater kid.” Starting in middle school, she tried out for every play she could, landing roles in productions such as “Diary of Anne Frank,” “Into the Woods” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” But when she didn’t get into a major theater program and landed at the University of Kansas, she quickly realized she had no real future as an actress.
“I wanted to be an actress, but I wasn’t very good at acting,” Glaser said in a recent phone conversation from St. Louis. “I wanted to be some sort of performer, but I didn’t have any sort of musical talent that I could rely on. I was just very depressed. I really thought I was gonna be an actress and it just wasn’t panning out.”
Then friends at college gave her a push in the right direction.
“People started telling me, ‘You’re really funny, you should be a comedian,’ ” Glaser said.
Though her parents were Maher fans, she didn’t grow up with much of an awareness of standup. She had been a fan of comedy — as a ’90s kid, “Seinfeld” and Conan O’Brien were her touchstones — but she needed Google to help her learn more about standup. There, she connected right away with Sarah Silverman and Wendy Liebman. (Coincidentally, Silverman toured Hawaii with Maher two years ago, and Liebman was scheduled to come in 2018 but was hit by a car, breaking both her legs.)
“They’re not only great at this,” Glaser thought at the time. “They’re better than male standups.”
Inspired, she signed up for the campus showcase.
“I did it one time and it was the best feeling in the world,” Glaser said. “It’s like out of a movie or something, but I called my dad afterward and I was crying, ‘This is what I want to do forever.’ I finished school, but by my senior year I got on ‘Last Comic Standing’ (a TV competition for standups) and then I moved to Los Angeles.”
Today, Liebman’s trademark “delayed punchline” style is still evident in Glaser’s act, but what Glaser is known for her sexual frankness. Her most recent standup special, 2019’s “Bangin’,” was almost entirely about sex and private parts.
Glaser said talking onstage about taboo topics has always come easy for her.
“That was never a struggle for me,” she said. “I’m missing the part of my brain that tells me, ‘Don’t tell people about these things.’ ”
WHEREAS Glaser has been a comic her entire career, Maher’s other special guest came to the stage after a lengthy career as a rapper and actor.
Reid is best known as the eraserheaded half of the seminal pop-rap duo Kid ’n Play. He met Maher in the ’90s when he was a panelist on “Politically Incorrect,” Maher’s forerunner to “Real Time.” Reid became a go-to fill-in guest because he lived nearby the studio where the show was shot, and he and Maher became friends.
When demand for Kid ’n Play waned, Reid, with the support of Maher and actor/comedian Tommy Davidson, gave standup comedy a try. He had been an actor in comedies such as the “House Party” films and was a naturally funny guy. Having been a rapper, ome aspects of standup turned out to be familiar to him.
“What I found was standup was very similar to being a rapper,” Reid said recently from his home in West Hollywood. “You gotta control the crowd, talk on the mic, let ’em know your point of view.”
He also found that the ability to think on his feet, which he had developed freestyling, helped him on the comedy stage.
“What I wanted to do was take that hip-hop skill set into standup,” Reid said. “A lot of times, my first 10 minutes I’m just talking to the crowd, trying to get to know them before I even get to the jokes.”
Reid took up comedy to stay on the stage, but in the past decade or so, he and his hip-hop partner, Christopher “Play” Martin — whom he met as a teen when he moved to East Elmhurst, Queens, in New York City — have found themselves in demand again with longtime fans who are now 40-something.
Reid books standup gigs around his music dates, with about a 50/50 split, though he’s been doing a bit more comedy lately to try to stay sharp for the Hawaii shows. He’s heard from Maher every year about how much fun the trip is and thinks that missing a year will add some fire to Maher’s act.
“He’s coming in hot, he’s coming in rip-roaring,” Reid said. “I think we all are. We’re all getting off the bench.”
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Bill Maher 10th Anniversary New Year’s Shows
>> Who: Bill Maher, Nikki Glaser and Christopher “Kid” Reid
>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> When: 7:30 p.m., Dec. 31
>> Tickets: $49.50 to $129.50, plus fees
>> Info: ticketmaster.com
>> Also: 8 p.m. Dec. 30, Maui Arts & Cultural Center
>> Note: Full vaccination and masks required
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