Bill Maher’s tasteless joke about a pop star’s body bombed with his own audience.
During his monologue on Friday’s Real Time With Bill Maher, the 70-year-old host was discussing newly released UFO files when he decided to drag singer Ariana Grande, 33, into the bit.
“The administration this week, just a few days ago, maybe yesterday, unleashed a new trove of UFO files. Interesting things in there,” Maher said. “Triangular craft, weird lights over an army base, a stick-like figure with large eyes—oh, that was just an Ariana Grande video.”
But Maher didn’t stop there.
“Please, we kid. We kid. Maybe that joke will make her eat something,” he added, prompting a wave of groans and boos from the audience.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Grande’s representatives for comment.
Grande has become the subject of intense social media scrutiny in recent months, with some fans raising concerns about her health and weight, while others have urged people to stop commenting on her body.
Last week, a representative for the Thank U, Next singer told People that Grande will be taking time away from the spotlight after wrapping her Eternal Sunshine world tour in London in September.
“She’s ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily, and then taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which has led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny,” the representative said.
Grande later clarified to fans during a concert in Chicago that the decision was “not a reactive or impulsive thing,” but a carefully considered one. “I want to share this because I heard that my fans were worried that negativity was ruining things for me, but I just have to say that could not be more the f--- opposite,” she said.
Concerns about Grande’s health date back to the press tour for Wicked: Part One in 2024, when fans began commenting on the singer’s apparent weight loss on her already petite frame.
In 2023, Grande urged people to be “gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies,” saying that her old body was actually the “unhealthiest” she had ever been.
Maher’s joke did not go down well on social media either. After he posted a clip of the monologue to his profiles, he was met with a barrage of criticism over his remarks about Grande.
“Not a fan of the Ariana Grande jokes, that’s how people joked about Chadwick Boseman until they realized they shouldn’t have,” one user wrote, referring to the Black Panther actor whose weight loss was also widely scrutinized before his death from colon cancer in 2020 at age 43.
Another user called the bit “poor taste,” while one critic wrote, “Your nastiness is showing through again—becoming unwatchable, really.”
