Standup comic Louis C.K., former late night time discuss present host Jay Leno and TV commentator Stephen A. Smith are among the many massive names who will take part within the celebration of Bill Maher when the veteran slapstick comedian and TV discuss present host receives the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Middle for the Performing Arts on Sunday, June 28, The Hollywood Reporter can solely report.
Others set to take part within the ceremony in Washington, D.C., which will probably be filmed for subsequent streaming on Netflix, embrace standup comic Whitney Cummings, actor Woody Harrelson, media mogul Arianna Huffington and singer/songwriter John Mellencamp, all of whom are common visitors on Maher’s HBO program Actual Time with Invoice Maher.
The Mark Twain Prize, named after the nineteenth century author who was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was created in 1998 to yearly honor one of many world’s nice humorists. Earlier recipients embrace Richard Pryor (1998), Jonathan Winters (1999), Carl Reiner (2000), Whoopi Goldberg (2001), Bob Newhart (2002), Lily Tomlin (2003), Lorne Michaels (2004), Steve Martin (2005), Neil Simon (2006), Billy Crystal (2007), George Carlin (2008), Invoice Cosby (2009, rescinded in 2018), Tina Fey (2010), Will Ferrell (2011), Ellen DeGeneres (2012), Carol Burnett (2013) Jay Leno (2014), Eddie Murphy (2015), Invoice Murray (2016), David Letterman (2017), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (2018), Dave Chappelle (2019), Jon Stewart (2022), Adam Sandler (2023), Kevin Hart (2024), and Conan O’Brien (2025).
Maher, who focuses on social and political commentary in his standup routine and on Actual Time (which he has hosted since 2003), is a polarizing determine in the mean time, having angered each Pres. Donald Trump and far of the left together with his acerbic criticisms of the present White Home and the “woke,” respectively.
Trump, who has lengthy been a goal of Maher’s jokes and sued Maher for $5 million in 2013 over one explicit crack, hosted the comic for dinner on the White Home in April 2025. However their detente didn’t final lengthy, as Maher continued to joke about Trump, prompting Trump to opine that the comic is “a highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” and to explain the dinner as a “waste of time.”
Again in March 2026, Trump, not lengthy after making an attempt to rename the Kennedy Center because the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Middle for the Performing Arts, expressed, by way of spokespeople, displeasure with the institution’s selection of Maher for the Mark Twain Prize. On Might 29, a federal choose ordered that Trump’s title have to be removed from the institution’s out of doors and indoor signage by June 12.
