Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

After a busy pandemic year, comedian Eddie Griffin is ready to return to his Las Vegas stage

Eddie Griffin

Courtesy

Comedian Eddie Griffin returns to his long-running residency show at the Sahara on July 26.

Sun on the Strip

Eddie Griffin

Brock talks with Sahara headlining comedian Eddie Griffin.

Veteran comedian and actor and Sahara Las Vegas resident headliner Eddie Griffin didn’t allow the global pandemic to change his schedule.

"I went out on the road every weekend,” he says on this week’s Sun on the Strip. “I was out there the whole time. Never caught a damn thing!”

But that doesn’t mean he enjoyed his travels. He detailed the challenges of performing over the past year in the recently released “docu-comedy” special “Laughin’ Through Your Mask,” available on YouTube, Prime and Apple TV.

“Wearing that mask on a seven-hour flight to the East Coast, that is hell. Then you check into a hotel room and there’s no room service,” Griffin says. “I hope airlines get back to serving hot meals soon and stop bringing me that box of junk. Their prices went up but service has gone down. And they wonder why people are fighting on the plane. They’re hungry! If somebody’s got a warm belly, they tend to go to sleep, so feed us!”

Griffin, who performed at the Rio for seven years before jumping to Sahara (then SLS Las Vegas) in 2018, will be back onstage there on July 26. He’ll return to his Monday-through-Wednesday schedule, allowing him to spend time with his family in Las Vegas during the week before hitting the road on the weekends, and he’ll start out in the new Magic Mike Live theater before moving to the larger showroom space formerly known as the Foundry.

“They are rearranging it for a smaller, more intimate feel,” he says.

Griffin also a new film coming out, one that was delayed by the pandemic. “The Comeback Trail” also stars Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones and is finally set for a July 23 theatrical release.

Griffin starred in last year’s “Bad President,” a smaller, satirical film that explained the Trump presidency as a simple deal with the devil.

“The devil is a fun character to play because he’s everywhere and no where all the time,” he says. “I’m truly a believer that Satan was behind everything that happened in that White House, and now, the Republican party. Anything that is good for the people, they’re against it.”

Find this week’s Vegas entertainment news, interviews and more every Wednesday with the Sun on the Strip.