LAS VEGAS — For twenty-one years, the trunk has opened at the Luxor Hotel and Casino. The props come out in sequence and Scott Thompson, who has performed as Carrot Top since the early 1990s, delivers the show he has been refining since November 22, 2005. On Friday evening, the trunk stayed closed.
Thompson, 61, was hospitalized in Las Vegas on Friday, his representative confirmed, forcing the cancellation of his shows at the Luxor on Friday and Saturday nights. His representative, Jami Schlicher, told Fox News: “Mr. Thompson is recovering in the hospital and is receiving the care and support he needs.” His family and those closest to him expressed gratitude for the concern and asked for privacy. The representative offered no further details about the nature of the hospitalization or its circumstances.
A Monday performance at the Luxor remained on the venue schedule as of Saturday, suggesting those managing the situation did not anticipate an extended absence. NBC News also confirmed the hospitalization and the statement from his team.
A stoppage of even two nights carries unusual weight because of what it interrupts.
Thompson’s residency at the Luxor is the longest-running comedy residency in Las Vegas history. He opened there nearly 22 years ago and has performed almost weekly ever since—through the 2008 financial crisis, the pandemic shutdown that halted Las Vegas entertainment for months, and the Strip’s continuing transformation, which ended or relocated nearly every other long-running residency of his era.
That continuity was not accidental. It reflected an understanding of what his audience wanted and the ability to deliver it reliably for two decades.
Thompson arrived in Las Vegas by a different route from most comedians who eventually establish residencies there. He built his national profile through college-tour bookings in the early 1990s, where his prop-heavy act translated effectively to large, loosely configured audiences.
Comedy Central specials followed. The 1998 film Chairman of the Board was not a critical success, but it established the name recognition that made an extended Las Vegas booking plausible.
When the Luxor engagement began in 2005, it was intended as a home for an act that had already proved it could hold a room. Neither the venue nor Thompson anticipated that the arrangement would still be running in 2026.
The hospitalization arrived at an already complicated moment. In August 2026, singer Brian Evans — a former Carrot Top opening act — filed a federal lawsuit against Thompson, alleging Thompson had sent Evans an unsolicited sexually explicit video. Thompson has not publicly addressed the suit. His representative and the lawsuit’s parties have not linked the litigation to this week’s circumstances, and no such connection should be assumed.
Las Vegas this week carried the entertainment momentum that has defined the city’s recent run as the country’s most visible live-performance destination. The iHeartRadio Music Festival drew large crowds across two nights at T-Mobile Arena, and the Strip’s other residencies ran unaffected. Las Vegas entertainment as a machine has never required any single act to keep moving. What Thompson built at the Luxor was something different — not a high-profile launch designed around spectacle and then wound down, but a twenty-one year argument for a kind of comedy that persists. Las Vegas has long traded in the mythology of extended performing careers, and Thompson’s version of that mythology has been, by any measure, the most durable in modern comedy.
No timeline for his return to the Luxor stage has been announced. The statement from his representative offered recovery as the operative word, and Monday’s show remaining on the schedule offered a practical indication of the expected direction. The next conversation about Thompson’s career is one he will need to initiate.
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