Bill Maher Confronts Jay Leno With Gambling Debt Rumors

Bill Maher confronted Jay Leno, 74, with a “conspiracy theory” that the former Tonight Show host’s spate of accidents in recent years were the result of a gambling addiction gone wrong.

“It’s a conspiracy theory since you’ve had three accidents that you actually have gambling debts and are being beaten up by the mob,” Maher told Leno, who laughed off the suggestion as he appeared on the Club Random podcast.

“I love the idea that the mob would drive to Greenberg, Pennsylvania, wait outside the Hampton Inn on a kind of sleety, rainy day to throw me down a hill,” Leno joked, referring to the most recent accident—which left him with a bruised face and sporting an eyepatch after he says he rolled down a steep hill and hit his eye on a rock.

Before that, Leno suffered multiple injuries related to maintaining his classic car collection, including one in which he set his face on fire and another that resulted in multiple broken bones.

All of this led to speculation that Leno, whose net worth is estimated to be north of $450 million, was the victim of loan sharks to whom he owed money. For years, Leno said publicly that he never spent his salary as longtime host of The Tonight Show and only lived off the income he received as a touring stand-up comic.

After Maher explained that no one thinks the mob threw him down a hill, but rather that he is coming up with elaborate “cover stories” for his bad luck. However, Leno calmly assured him that all of his injuries have perfectly reasonable explanations.

“I like the idea that they wouldn’t just take one of my cars to pay the gambling debt,” Leno said.

The comedian went on to recount that his Tonight Show predecessor Johnny Carson did actually run afoul of organized crime after he was caught “hitting on” a pair of mob girlfriends.

“They put a hit out on Carson. So Carson stops The Tonight Show for the week. He just goes, he leaves, because this is real,” Leno told Maher, adding that the hit was only called off after NBC agreed to air coverage of an Italian “parade” run by the Five Families.