{"id":208896,"date":"2025-10-08T10:53:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208896\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T10:53:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T10:53:07","slug":"jimmy-kimmel-challenges-aziz-ansari-over-saudi-arabia-comedy-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208896\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Kimmel Challenges Aziz Ansari Over Saudi Arabia Comedy Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aziz Ansari<\/a> was among the comedians who recently traveled to Saudi Arabia to perform at the controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival<\/a>, a decision that raised eyebrows and prompted questions from Jimmy Kimmel.<\/p>\n

Ansari appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday, October 6th, to promote his feature directorial debut, Good Fortune.\u00a0Toward the end of the interview, Kimmel took the opportunity to ask Ansari about his choice to perform at the festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are questioning why you would go over there and take their money to perform in front of these people,\u201d Kimmel commented. \u201cThis is something that\u2019s become a big part of the news because people, a lot of comedians especially, are very upset because the people who paid the comedians to come to this are not good people. It\u2019s a pretty brutal regime. They\u2019ve done a lot of horrible, horrible things\u2026 I\u2019m curious as to why you decided to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ansari noted that \u201cit\u2019s something I put a lot of thought into\u201d before deciding to accept the invitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have an aunt that lived there for a while, and I talked to her about this, and she said, you know, there\u2019s people over there that don\u2019t agree with the stuff that the government\u2019s doing, and to ascribe like the worst behavior of the government onto those people, that\u2019s not fair,\u201d Ansari explained. \u201cJust like there\u2019s people in America that don\u2019t agree with the things the government is doing, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Video<\/p>\n

Kimmel continued to press Ansari, saying that while the American government is doing \u201chorrible things,\u201d he called out the Saudi government for extreme atrocities, saying, \u201cThey murdered a journalist,\u201d in reference to the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, adding that \u201cthese are not good people over there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just there to do a show for the people, and I talked to my wife about this before I went, and she said, you know, whenever there\u2019s repressive societies like this, they try to keep things out, whether it\u2019s rock and roll music, or, blue jeans, because it makes people curious about outside ideas, outside values,\u201d Ansari said. \u201cAnd this is a very young country, like half the country is under the age of 25, and things can really change. And to me, a comedy festival felt like something that\u2019s pushing things to be more open and to push a dialogue. You kind of have to make a choice of whether you\u2019re going to isolate or engage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later on in the interview, Ansari shared that after accepting the invitation to perform, he decided that part of his fee would go towards \u201ccauses that support free press and human rights,\u201d specifying Reporters Without Borders<\/a> and Human Rights Watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a complicated issue, but I felt like it was something that was pushing things in the right direction, I hope,\u201d Ansari added. Watch the full interview below.<\/p>\n

Bill Burr, who also appeared at the festival, used his podcast to defend the decision<\/a>, calling it a \u201cgreat\u201d experience, and concluding that the people there are \u201cjust like us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Chappelle declared<\/a> that \u201cit\u2019s easier to talk here (in Saudi Arabia) than it is in America\u201d during his set at the festival.<\/p>\n

Lesbian comic Jessica Kirson apologized<\/a> for performing at the event, while Louis C.K. has defended<\/a> his decision to appear.<\/p>\n

Other comedians who performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival include Sebastian Maniscalco, Kevin Hart, Chris Tucker, Pete Davidson, and Whitney Cummings.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aziz Ansari was among the comedians who recently traveled to Saudi Arabia to perform at the controversial Riyadh…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-208896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}