A-list comedians are taking heat from their industry peers for their upcoming participation in the contentious Riyadh Comedy Festival, kicking off Friday in Saudi Arabia, which has been under scrutiny for years over human rights abuses.
Dave Chappelle, Aziz Ansari and Pete Davidson are among the comedians on the star lineup. Their representatives did not reply to The Times’ requests for comment.
The comedy festival is the latest high-profile event in Saudi Arabia to court U.S. celebrities and advance the country’s Vision 2030 plan to diversify its economy and raise its global profile. The country in 2019 launched the Red Sea International Film Festival with this mission and has since contributed heavily to Hollywood productions and L.A.’s broader entertainment industry. In 2018, the kingdom announced plans to spend $64 billion on its entertainment sector in the next decade.
Who’s on the lineup?
Billed as “the world’s largest comedy festival,” the Riyadh Comedy Festival will run Friday through Oct. 9 in Saudi Arabia’s capital. More than 50 international comedians are slated to perform a mix of stand-up, improv and live talk shows.
The lineup includes Kevin Hart, Andrew Schulz, Sebastian Maniscalco, Bill Burr, Louis C.K., Whitney Cummings, Gabriel Iglesias, Jo Koy, Hannibal Buress, Maz Jobrani, Zarna Garg, Bobby Lee, Jeff Ross, Andrew Santino, Tom Segura, Chris Tucker and more.
Comedy Central alum Jim Jefferies said he was strongly discouraged from attending the festival.
“People have been going, ‘Oh, how dare you go over there after they killed a reporter?’” Jefferies said during an August appearance on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast.
The comedian went on to say that the allegation was not enough to compel him to back out of the festival.
“One reporter was killed by the government,” Jefferies said. “Unfortunate, but not a f— hill that I’m gonna die on.”
Tim Dillon was scheduled to perform, but was later dropped by the Riyadh festival, he said, because of jokes he made about Saudi Arabia’s alleged use of slave labor.
As for why he accepted the gig in the first place, Dillon said last month on “The Tim Dillon Show” that he was “being paid a lot of money to not care about what they do in their country.”
Dillon also mocked his critics during the episode, impersonating them in a droning voice: “They don’t believe in anything, these people.”
“Get over it. We’re going to Riyadh,” Dillon said. “The House of Saud is paying us hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of us millions, not me.”
The comedian claimed on his show that he was offered $375,000 to perform at the festival and that his higher-profile peers would receive upwards of $1.6 million for their time.
Why is the festival controversial?
The Saudi government’s General Entertainment Authority, the body producing the festival, said the event “reflects the efforts to amplify Riyadh’s status as a leading destination for major cultural and artistic events.”
In a press release issued Tuesday, nonprofit watchdog Human Rights Watch said the Riyadh Comedy Festival was the Saudi government’s attempt to “deflect attention from its brutal repression of free speech and other pervasive human rights violations.”
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund was previously accused of attempting to repair its reputation with the 2021 launch of LIV Golf. Critics argued the golf series was a deliberate attempt at “sportswashing” by “banking on the glamour of athletics to outshine concerns about a history of human rights abuses,” The Times reported at the time.
Human Rights Watch noted in its Tuesday release that the festival is scheduled to take place during the seventh anniversary of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi agents and just months after Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser was sentenced to death “apparently for his public speech,” as the nonprofit wrote in its release.
Human Rights Watch said festival performers, in order “to avoid contributing to laundering the Saudi government’s reputation, should use the comedy festival to publicly urge Saudi authorities to free unjustly detained Saudi dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists.”
Who’s speaking out?
Comedian Marc Maron panned the festival during a stand-up set and shared a video from the performance Tuesday on Instagram.
“I mean, how do you even promote that?” Maron said. “You know, like, ‘From the folks that brought you 9/11, two weeks of laughter in the desert. Don’t miss it!’”
The host of the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast, which is ending this fall after 16 years, went on to say that because he wasn’t asked to perform, “it’s kind of easy for me to take the high road on this one.”
“Easy to maintain your integrity when no one’s offering to buy it out,” he quipped.
“The Office” actor and comedian Zach Woods also slammed the festival in a satirical video posted Wednesday on Instagram.
“Guys, it’s that special time of year,” Woods said, mimicking the tone of an advertiser. “It’s the Riyadh Comedy Festival and all of your favorite comedians are performing at the pleasure of Turki Al-Sheikh.”
Woods noted that Al-Sheikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority, has detained so many people for tweets he deemed critical of “the soccer team or whatever” that a wing of the Al-Ha’ir Prison is unofficially named after him.
“Now there’s a lot of drips, killjoys and dweebazoids who are saying, ‘Oh, they shouldn’t do comedy over there because it’s whitewashing a regime that just in June killed a journalist and killed Jamal Khashoggi and played a big role in 9/11,’” Woods said.
“Shut up. Name one comedian who hasn’t whored themselves out to a dictator,” he said.
Unlike Maron, stand-up comic Shane Gillis said he was invited to perform at the comedy festival, but wound up declining despite the event organizers doubling their initial offer.
“It was a significant bag. But I’d already said no. I took a principled stand,” Gillis said on an episode of “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast,” which he co-hosts with Matt McCusker.
Gillis said he was heavily pressured to accept the gig during a different episode of the podcast in July.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Yeah you should do it. Everyone’s doing it,’” Gillis said. “It’s like, ‘For Saudis?’”
Gillis ultimately decided, “I think I’m gonna pass.”
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