Carrot Top burst onto the comedy scene in the early 1990s, taking the concept of prop
comedy to stratospheric new heights while making himself a permanent fixture in the
Las Vegas entertainment industry. But besides getting ripped, what has he been up to since?
A 1995 Los Angeles Times profile noted
that Carrot Top was preparing to star in his first movie, 1998's Chairman of the Board, with hopes
that it would lead to more roles. It ultimately proved to be a critical and commercial failure
that scored a woeful 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with box office returns of just over $181,000.
As bad as the box office was, the reviews were worse.
David Kronke wrote for the Los Angeles Times -
"If Carrot Top is indeed destined for celluloid stardom, look for a lot of
film critics' and movie projectionists' jobs to open up in the coming years."
Mystery Science Theater 3000's Michael J. Nelson, writing for Cracked,
included Chairman of the Board on his list of "The 5 Worst Comedies of All Time."
"Hey Armand, I have to say you've looked better.
Sorry I couldn't make the goodbye barbeque. You wanna say something?"
Even Carrot Top himself couldn't muster up much enthusiasm for his own big screen debut.
Telling the A.V. Club in 1997 -
"It's a cute little movie. I'm sure it's no Academy Award-winning movie;
it's not even a Jim Carrey movie. I think it's basically just a movie."
Carrot Top's popularity
was something of a double-edged sword in his early days of success. While his fan base grew,
so too did his detractors, particularly among fellow comedians. As his 1995 Los Angeles
Times profile pointed out, comics mocked him — fellow comedian Dom Irrera said -
"I don't consider him a stand-up. I consider him a clown."
Two decades later, in an interview with Esquire, Carrot Top admitted he used to
be stung by comments like that, but over time he's learned to slough them off, explaining -
"I can be out in a restaurant and I can see people talking s---, nasty,
and it really used to bother me. Now I kind of soak it in. I've learned that a
lot of times I think they're saying horrible things and they're not."
Carrot Top also reminds himself of the comedians who have professed to enjoy his act, saying -
"When people make fun of me, I used to always say, you know what, George Carlin f---ing liked
me. And Jay Leno likes me. And Bill Maher likes me. I always had that in the back of my head."
During the early part
of the 2000s, Carrot Top became interested in bodybuilding. He pursued his hobby with gusto,
eventually looking more like a red-headed Mr. Universe contestant than the prop comic of old.
Given his massive musculature, there were whispers of steroid use.
Confronted with the rumors during a 2014 interview with Penn & Teller's Penn Jillette,
Carrot Top insisted he was steroid-free, telling Jillette -
"I did everything but steroids. I did stuff that you could buy at GNC, but I ate
tons of it. I mean I had like 200 pills a day, I was just eating... "
However it wasn't all about getting buff, as Carrot Top told Esquire in 2015 -
"Maybe five years ago, I decided I'd worked out enough. I quit cold turkey.
Didn't go to the gym for maybe a year. Then I started running. That's where I am now.
I just kind of wanted a normal build."
While Carrot Top may have
been dissed by some of his fellow comedians, that isn't true of all of them. Case in point:
back in 2017, he shared a photo of himself on Instagram posing with Amy Schumer,
who had been in the audience for one of his Vegas shows.
In fact, an iconic Oscar winner is also a fan,
according to an anecdote Carrot Top shared with VSiN, recalling -
"I was in Aspen years ago. I was walking along after working out at the gym. It was about 9
in the morning. It was misty. And there's a guy walking across the street toward me and I think,
'Gawd, that's Jack Nicholson.' Then I realized it is Jack Nicholson."
The comedian admitted he was so star-struck that he ultimately decided not to say anything.
It was Nicholson, in fact, who apparently approached him, calling out -
"Top! I've always wanted to meet you!"
As Carrot Top related, Nicholson, quote, "was as down to earth and as nice as he could be."
Over the years, Carrot Top's fans have noticed that his appearance has changed, and not just his
buff bod. When rumors swirled of cosmetic surgery, however, Carrot Top consistently batted them away.
The hearsay, he said in a 2013 interview with Oprah: Where Are They Now?, began when he was
teased about his appearance during a Comedy Central roast. He went on to recall his reaction:
"I'm sorry that I look good. I don't think I look
anything different than I did when I started [in comedy]."
While discussing the plastic surgery rumors with Florida Today in 2015, Carrot Top conceded -
"I can see why people would think that since I got really big for awhile, but I never had
any work done. I mean, if I was going to have plastic surgery, I would look better than this!"
It's hardly a secret that Carrot Top is a polarizing figure in the comedy community,
and the decades of criticism is something he's struggled to understand,
as he told the Tampa Bay Times in 2015:
"If you're doing something in a completely different realm,
I would think most people would welcome it with open arms, like,
'Wow, this is something different and innovative and creative, a different way of doing comedy.'"
Given that his Vegas show has been running successfully since 2005,
he compared himself to Canadian rockers Nickelback,
another act that gets constantly slagged despite being massively popular, saying -
"You go to a Nickelback concert, and it's packed, and they're killing it, and you get done,
and you're like, How could people make fun of Nickelback? It's an awesome show.
A lot of it has to do with animosity and whatnot, which is always understandable in this business."
While Carrot Top's film career may have begun and ended with Chairman of the Board,
he's still managed to make occasional guest appearances in film and television.
Among these was a brief cameo in Sharknado 4: The Fourth Awakens, playing an Uber
driver who drops off shark-fighting protagonist Finn at his Vegas hotel,
though he insisted on adding a little something extra to the script, as he told Click Orlando -
"They said, 'That's a wrap on Carrot Top' — and I'm like, 'Wait a minute! Am I not getting eaten?'
And [director Anthony Ferrante is like, 'Do you want to get eaten?' And I'm like,
'The whole reason anyone would want to be on Sharknado is to get eaten!'"
And just like that, his wish was granted.
Carrot Top began his residency at the Luxor in Las Vegas back in 2005;
since then, he's gone on to perform more than 200 shows a year. But as he told Click Orlando in
2020, he was initially reluctant about taking up professional residency in Sin City, explaining -
"When I first got the offer to do it, I turned it down. I was like,
'I don't want to be in Vegas. That's where old guys go to die.' Then I took the gig,
and I've slowly turned into [...] I can't imagine not doing this here."
Speaking with Las Vegas Magazine after signing a deal that would
keep him at the Luxor until 2025, Carrot Top admitted -
"I definitely didn't imagine I'd have this kind of staying power. [...] Starting in Vegas,
I was the sideshow in a sense. If you couldn't get into Cirque [du Soleil], maybe you'd go
see Carrot Top. And then I slowly became more comfortable with how to work a Vegas audience."
"Haha that's pretty good wasn't it?"
"Oh this could be a problem. Ahh man…"
As a resident of Las Vegas, Carrot Top owns a home there — and it shares a connection
with another performer who's long been associated with Sin City: Céline Dion.
According to a 2015 profile in Esquire, Carrot Top's house was constructed by the same person
who had done Dion's and had even recycled some materials into the comedian's home.
According to Celebrity Detective, Carrot Top reportedly purchased the place back in 2006,
paying a hefty $1.9 million. The home apparently boasts more than
4,300 square feet of living space in which he can putter around,
including a spacious swimming pool, three bedrooms, and a sauna as well.
Interestingly enough, when the French-Canadian
chanteuse temporarily ended her Las Vegas residency in August 2014,
she became the punchline for a Carrot Top zinger on social media. The comedian tweeted -
"Well I guess Celine Dion is now Celine dioff!"
While estimates of Carrot Top's wealth have varied, there's no denying that
he's made a lot of money since he first took to the stage of the Luxor in 2005.
In fact, hunkering down in Vegas is the primary reason why Carrot Top is so rich.
According to a 2012 piece in The New York Times that compared the salaries of different comedians,
comics on the lower rungs of the comedy ladder can spend a year or more building up an act that could
eventually earn them a Comedy Central special — for which they're paid $15,000. For Carrot Top,
performing six nights a week at the Luxor has proven to be a far more lucrative proposition.
In 2020, the Luxor announced that it had renewed Carrot Top's deal and extended his
run for five more years. While the amount he was being paid wasn't made public, it's easy
to assume that by the time 2025 rolls around, Carrot Top's net worth will be even higher.
Live performances came grinding to a halt throughout America in March 2020
thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Carrot Top's Las Vegas stage show was not immune,
and he found himself benched — just months after signing on for five more years at the Luxor.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal he said -
"It's been the toughest thing to deal with in my career. I've been through
a lot of adversity, but I've been able to work. I need to get back onstage."
After nearly a year of being offstage, he resumed performing in February 2021.
There were, however, some big changes in order to maintain the reopening restrictions put in place
by the governor of Nevada. Instead of performing at his usual 350-seat venue, the Atrium Showroom,
Carrot Top moved his act to the larger Luxor Theater, with a capacity of 1,500.
Due to those social-distancing restrictions,
however, he would only be playing to an audience of 100. As he said at the time -
"We're giving it a shot. We've got to start somewhere.
I miss doing the only thing I know how to do."
Shortly after Americans were sent huddling in their homes when the COVID-19 pandemic entered
the country in March 2020, Carrot Top gave fans a video tour of his home in Florida, and shared
how he'd been spending his time in quarantine, highlighting the beard he'd been working on
growing while in lockdown. But quarantining alone wasn't a problem, as Carrot Top went on to joke -
"I don't have any friends, so that's been the easiest part."
He'd also been doing some reading, claiming that he now knows more about Elton John than
he probably does himself after reading the rock icon's autobiography three times. Meanwhile,
like many others, Carrot Top also watched a little Tiger King, quipping of the docuseries -
"I feel like Mother Teresa. You watch that, you're like, 'I'm a good person.'"
Go-to entertainment aside, Carrot Top also revealed that he came up with his
own signature quarantine cocktail, which is made from gin, some Sprite soda, lemon, strawberries,
blueberries, and a pack of hot dogs, though he was likely joking about that last ingredient.
To make the Carrot Top cocktail, he explained, put all those ingredients in a blender — or,
y'know, just relax and crack open a beer, as the comic himself did in the funny clip.
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