Drew Carey caught fans’ attention on social media when he posted in the wee hours Monday morning to declare his intense joy after seeing the jam band Phish play a show at Las Vegas’ Sphere venue. For the comedian and “Price Is Right” host, it was a spiritual experience that he compared with explicit sexual terms — including positing that how Phish made him feel must be what a female orgasm feels like. He went on CBS’ “After Midnight” late Tuesday night to explain himself/make his pitch for everyone to go see Phish at the Sphere.
“I swear I just talked to God,” Carey wrote in his first post, shared at 3:41 a.m. Monday along with a video of Phish playing under trippy Sphere visuals displaying swirling space imagery. “I would give you all my money, stick my d–k in a blender and swear off p–y for the rest of my life in exchange for this. Bro I met God tonight for real. I feel like I just got saved by Jesus no lie.”
But it was perhaps another tweet he sent, responding to a user who wrote “I’m still melted,” where Carey made his more extreme comparison.
“This is what it must feel like to c–m with a p–y,” Carey wrote. “Because if it’s even close I’m flaying to wherever tomorrow and getting the best p–y money can buy. I don’t need to be a man no more [if] it means I can feel like this all the time.”
“F–king keep it bro if I can get this feeling instead,” Carey continued. “That was God at work or something. Like it felt like I was being saved by Jesus no lie.”
In a segment on CBS’ faux comedic game show “After Midnight,” host Taylor Tomlinson asked Carey, “Drew, if you weren’t being filmed right now, what would you say?”
He took the opportunity to make a profanity-laden pitch for his Phish experience.
“So I saw Phish at the Sphere this weekend,” Carey enthusiastically began, to laughs from the crowd. “Never saw Phish. Never, didn’t know Phish. And they [censored] blew my mind off so hard, I thought to myself — I had a bunch of girls with me. And I thought to myself, is this what it’s like to [censored]?!”
As the crowd laughed, he continued, “People that were there could verify 100% true. This is what it’s like.”
He then tried to explain the sexual, spiritual experience he had recently undergone.
“It was like being edged for four days straight,” Carey said. “And then right before the face-melting climax at the end on the fourth day, an angel comes down from heaven, Gabriel. And he shoots [censored] heroin in your arm. And he says, good luck now, [censored]. And he leaves. And then you have an orgasm for 15 minutes while your eyeballs fall out of your head.”
He concluded, “NNext time they play the Sphere, you better not miss it.”
Carey went back to his podium, raving about the experience to fellow panelists “Weird Al” Yankovic and Thomas Lennon. At this point, Lennon quickly realized that, after that, there’s no way they could just continue on with the show as if nothing happened.
“It’s going to be really neat to watch this later and see what this next thing comes out of,” Lennon quipped. He told the crowd, “People will ask you for interviews about the day that you were there. You don’t have to give them, but you can.”
“Why didn’t they let Drew talk?” Yankovic speculated people would ask about the sure-to-be-edited version of Carey’s Phish endorsement.
“HR wants to talk to all of you,” Lennon said. “So just if you stay in your seats, HR will do like a duck, duck, goose before you go.”
“That was so great. And we can definitely use all of it,” host Tomlinson said, to incredulous laughter from the crowd. “Absolutely we can. And I don’t want you guys to take my next sentence as any indication that we can’t use it.”
Then, after taking a beat, Tomlinson said, “Oh, you’d like to pass? That’s OK. Thomas–” as if Carey had chosen not to answer the question.
When she tired to ask Lennon his own fun question, the actor and comedian declined to go along with that.
“I don’t think there’s any universe where we’re still doing bits after that,” Lennon said. “Like, I mean– We actually were just all at Phish at the Sphere.”
“I don’t understand how you don’t think that’s a natural transition from Gabriel [censored],” Tomlinson added.
Carey’s Phish experience continued to be called back throughout the show by both Lennon and Yankovic.
Eventually, Tomlinson explained, “It’s so great because we can’t edit it out now. It’s too woven into the fabric of the episode.”
When Carey was later asked which of his projects embarrasses him the most, Carey responded, “This one,” before yelling incredulously, “I used to be a star!”
Tomlinson fired back, “No,” before conceding, “This is an appearance that you probably shouldn’t have agreed to, correct.”
When asked if there was anything he could take back, Yankovic responded, “Oh, gosh. So many things in my life I feel regretful for. But my number one regret of all time is not seeing Phish at the Sphere. I don’t know where I heard this — I heard it’s like Peter Gabriel coming down from heaven and shooting you with heroin and saying, ‘Good luck, my fine fellow.’”
Carey has publicly joked about his love of psychedelics in previous standup comedy appearances, which combined with the reputation of Phish, had already led many fans to speculate about Carey’s state of mind during the Sphere concert.
You can watch the full clip of Drew Carey and all his Phish/Sphere moments on “After Midnight” in the video at the top of this page.
