A Canadian medical nonprofit is apologizing after the comedian Rob Schneider performed at a fundraising event on Saturday night, reportedly regaling an uncomfortable crowd with hacky material about vaccines, women, and transgender people until he was kicked offstage in the middle of his set—for the second time in recent months.
“Everyone in the room was groaning, saying, ‘What is going on?’ Like whispering to themselves. Not a single laugh at times,” a witness told the CBC. “It was just very apparent how uncomfortable everyone felt and how unacceptable the things he was talking about were.”
The Regina Leader-Post reported that the comedian was “roundly booed” throughout his performance.
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The Hospitals of Regina Foundation issued a “sincere and unconditional” mea culpa after the sold-out event, which was held at the Conexus Arts Centre and raised $350,000 for the city’s hospitals.
“While we recognize that in a free and democratic society individuals are entitled to their views and opinions and that comedy is intended to be edgy, the content, positions and opinions expressed during Mr. Schneider’s set do not align with the values of our foundation and team,” the organization said in a statement.
“We do not condone, accept, endorse or share Mr. Schneider’s positions, as expressed during his comedy set and acknowledge that in this instance the performance did not meet the expectations of our audience and our team.”
The foundation said that a decision had been made mid-set “to end his performance earlier than intended, to which he agreed and immediately left the stage.” It added that “an unconditional apology” had been offered to attendees straight after. Schneider was booked for the event in 2023 through the foundation’s booking agent, it said.
Schneider was similarly yanked offstage at a Republican networking event last year, making it through less than a third of his set before at least one lawmaker walked out of the room and the host cut him off. The 60-year-old comic later doubled down on his material, which reportedly included jokes about “Korean whore-houses.”
“I AM COMING to Washington DC to perform and I will tell you ALL the JOKES that this group of pussies and professional political asskissers are whining about!!” he wrote in a tweet shilling tickets for his next show.
The witness who spoke to the CBC, Tynan Allan, said he couldn’t understand how the foundation didn’t know who it had booked.
“He’s been antivaxx throughout the pandemic, and he’s said transphobic things for years,” he said. “I understand that you’re raising money, that you sometimes need to draw a crowd, but it doesn’t take a lot to vet people and specifically to vet people from a values-based perspective.”
