Carrot Top Hospitalized in Las Vegas — Is His $1.87M Home and 21-Year Luxor Residency in Jeopardy?

On the evening of Friday, September 18th, 2026, [music] the trunk stayed closed. For 21 years, six nights a week, Scott Thompson, and the world knows him [music] as Carrot Top, has opened that trunk on the stage of the Atrium showroom at the Luxer Hotel and Casino, pulling out the props that built one of the longest [music] running comedy residencies in Las Vegas history. That night, it didn't happen. Thompson, 61, was hospitalized in Las Vegas, [music] forcing the cancellation of his Friday and Saturday shows. Multiple outlets, including TMZ, have reported the hospitalization followed a suicide attempt, though his representative Jaime [music] Schlicker has not confirmed the specific circumstances, saying only that Mr. Thompson is recovering in the hospital and is receiving the care and support he needs and that his family is deeply grateful for the concern, prayers, and respectfully ask [music] for privacy. By Sunday afternoon, the update was a more hopeful one. His [music] representative told TMZ he was awake, breathing on his own, continuing to improve, and surrounded [music] by family, even joking with the medical staff caring for him. MGM Resorts, which operates the Luxor, called him [music] a beloved member of the Luxor and MGM Resorts family and said the company was relieved to hear he was recovering. As of this writing, Monday's [music] show remained listed for sale, and the residency itself under contract through [music] 2030 has not been described as ending, only paused while the man at the center of it heals. [music] Today we are talking about Carrot Top, the 21-year Las Vegas institution behind that residency, the modest [music] Spring Valley home he has lived in for two decades while performing to millions, and the extraordinarily long unusual career that turned a Florida Atlantic University marketing [music] student with a mortgage company courier job into the strip's most durable comedian. And we are talking honestly about a difficult [music] week for a man who has spent three decades making people laugh without turning his hospitalization into anything more [music] than what his own team has said about it. He is recovering. He is surrounded by people who love him and he has asked for the [music] privacy to do exactly that. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline by calling or texting 988. Help [music] is available and no one should have to face a crisis alone. Scott Christopher Thompson was born on February 25th, 1965 in [music] Rock Ledge, Florida and grew up nearby in Coco on Florida's space coast. [music] He was the younger of two sons. His father, Larry Thompson, worked as a NASA engineer at Kennedy Space Center for three decades [music] across the Gemini, Apollo, Skyab, and Space Shuttle programs. >> My dad worked at the space center. Yes. This the shirt actually is kind of a moon that works for this. Um he'd go to the space center and you know he he was an engineer and he worked on everything Apollo you know shuttle everything. >> An upbringing surrounded by rockets, gadgets [music] and the kind of tinkering instinct Thompson has credited in his own words as the source of the little engineer spark that eventually became the foundation of his entire act. He attended Coco High School, played drums in the marching band, and picked up the nickname [music] that would define his career almost by accident. A local swim coach, noting his bright red hair, started calling him Carrot Top, and it stuck for good. [music] He enrolled at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton to study marketing, a practical, unglamorous major that, as [music] it turned out, taught him something genuinely useful about how to package an idea and reach an audience. [music] During his freshman year, a roommate talked him into trying standup at a campus open mic. The first attempt, built on old, borrowed jokes, [music] went nowhere. He went back the following semester with material he had written himself, rooted in college life rather [music] than secondhand bits, and it worked. He never really stopped after that. He built his act through the late 1980s on the Comedy Club circuit, [music] touring at first with little more than two trunks of props in a strobe light, developing the visual, rapidfire, self-deprecating style [music] that would eventually separate him from every other comic of his generation. National exposure came through Comic Strip Live and Star Search in the early 1990s. Film work followed, including the 1998 comedy Chairman of the Board. Not a critical success, but enough of a calling card to make an [music] extended Las Vegas booking plausible. His history with the city actually predates that. He did limited engagements at the MGM [music] Grand going back into the 1990s, long before Las Vegas became his permanent address rather than just another stop. That permanent address arrived on November 22nd, [music] 2005, when Carrot Top opened his residency at the Luxer's Atrium showroom. It was supposed to be a home for an act that had already [music] proven itself elsewhere. Instead, it became the defining chapter of his career. He ressigned with MGM Resorts in 2023, and multiple [music] outlets at the time noted he had become the longestr running comedy headliner in the company's history. In February 2026, [music] marking his 20th anniversary at the venue, he talked to Las Vegas Weekly about [music] how completely the city had adopted him. A comic who had once done short engagements at the MGM Grand in the 1990s, now considered by his own account and everyone else's, a genuine Las Vegas institution. Weeks before his hospitalization, Las Vegas Weekly's own readers voted him best comedian [music] in the city's 2026 Best of Vegas Awards, noting that his recently extended contract would carry [music] him through a full quarter century on the strip by 2030. And through all 21 of [music] those years, Thompson has lived a version of that Las Vegas fame that almost nobody outside the comedy [music] world would recognize as such. In early 2006, not long after the Luxor residency began, he purchased a home in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Las Vegas for $1.87 [music] million. A private gated single family property roughly 15 minutes from the strip, close enough to get to the Atrium showroom quickly, far enough [music] to actually have a life away from it. Built in 2004, the house spans just over 4,000 square ft with [music] three bedrooms and 2 and a half bathrooms sitting on just under half an acre of land. It is not, by any Las Vegas [music] celebrity real estate standard, an especially large home. There is [music] a private pool. There is a home theater. Reports describing the interior mention hardwood flooring and an eclectic [music] personalitydriven decor rather than anything showroom formal along [music] with the kind of storage space you would expect from a performer who has spent two decades building and hauling custom props for a living. That is in essence the entire real estate story. One home purchased once 20 years ago, sized [music] for a single comedian rather than a growing empire in a quiet residential pocket of a city built almost [music] entirely around spectacle. Carrot Top never bought a second house, never built a compound, never [music] chased the kind of address his 21-year residency, and reported tens of millions in career earnings could have afforded him. He bought a [music] gated three-bedroom house near his work and stayed in it the same way he has stayed at the Luxor since a president younger than the residency [music] itself was still in office. What happens next for the residency and for the man behind it is genuinely unclear as of this writing. What is clear is what his team, his employer, and the fans reacting to the news this weekend have [music] all said in roughly the same words. That Scott Thompson built something real over [music] these 21 years. a career, a home, a place in Las Vegas history, [music] and that right now the only thing that matters is that he gets the chance to keep it. If you or [music] someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text anytime at 988. [music] Drop your well-wishes for Scott Thompson in the comments below. Hey. [music]