Bill Maher slammed Hollywood’s “woke left” faction, urging Democrats to tell celebrities to “shut the f--k up” if they want to win elections.
Fresh off his loss at the Golden Globes, the Real Time host ripped into the industry, criticizing both its place in politics and calling Hollywood the “sort of the epicenter of the woke left.”
“I don’t think they’re doing the Democratic Party any favors,” he told The California Post.
“I think if Democrats want to win elections in the future, job one, tell the celebrities to ‘Just shut the f--- up.’ You’re not helping. You don’t strike people in most of the country as sensible or in touch with reality,” he continued.
Maher told the Post that, unlike others, he calls out whatever he doesn’t like, on both sides of the increasingly polarized political spectrum.
“My whole personality, unlike a lot of the people out here, isn’t just Trump,” he said. “I don’t hate everything. I don’t have Trump derangement syndrome. Having said that, there’s just a lot of stuff I don’t like, and I’m going to call it out.”
In what is a touch of irony, Maher also just called Hollywood “a force for good” on a Jan. 26 episode of his Club Random podcast.
“When Hollywood addresses an issue, it does change minds. And it’s mostly been for the better,” he told his guest, filmmaker Dan Farah.
“It’s mostly been liberal people saying, you know what, ‘let’s move up on this.’ Now we’ve entered a woke era where I think we went a few subway stops past where we should have gotten off on some things, but basically Hollywood has been a force for good in opening people’s eyes to a lot of social issues that they need to have their eyes open to,” he said.
Maher’s remarks about the industry come weeks after he was a first-time nominee for the “Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television” award at the 2026 Golden Globes. The host was nominated for his HBO stand-up special, Is Anyone Else Seeing This? He ultimately lost the race to comedian Ricky Gervais.
Prior to his loss, Maher had already predicted that his politics would prevent him from ever securing one of Hollywood’s elite awards. Speaking on a pre-recorded episode of his podcast, Maher told actor Joel Edgerton, “Sweetheart, I’ve been nominated for 33 Emmys, and they would never give it to me.”
The commentator has been nominated for a whopping 58 Emmys, in fact, and won just one of these awards in 2014 as a producer for HBO’s Vice.
“Obviously, it’s something I said,” Maher continued, venting about his place in Hollywood. “Well, it’s everything I said, because I speak freely, and this woke town f---ing hates that. And that’s OK. I made my peace with that. But so, I know how this goes.”
At the award ceremony, right before announcing the winner of Best Stand-Up Comedy, presenter Wanda Sykes roasted Maher in her speech. “Bill Maher—you give us so much,” she said. “But I would love a little less.” Cameras then panned to Maher, who looked unamused by her comments.
Maher has made several references to Hollywood’s “wokeness” in recent months. In a podcast episode following his Golden Globes loss, he said his nomination was a sign that “we are coming out of wokeness.”
“This is the first time in a while I’ve been nominated for something, which I think shows a little bit that we are coming out of the wokeness,” he said. Thanks to wokeness, he added, he was “considered conservative” – a label he deemed “ridiculous.”
“I take it as a victory that they were not able to ignore how good that special was,” he said about his nomination. “I’m not going to lie. It’s just a really good special,” he said of his own work. “But, you know, it’s not one that the woke can watch and not throw up because I call their s--t out.”
Maher also said that only “the super woke stuff” was nominated for the inaugural Golden Globes Best Podcast awards.
The host continued his critique of the podcast award while speaking to the California Post, saying, “It was typical and predictable and also ridiculous that Joe Rogan wouldn’t be nominated in a category that he dominates.”
Despite his complaints of being left on the fringes of the industry, Maher has been granted two more seasons of his HBO show. The network renewed Real Time through 2028, saying in a statement, “The multi-season renewal underscores the show’s continued audience growth and cultural relevance.”
