"It's easier to talk here than it is in America," Dave Chappelle told a cheering audience during his controversial appearance at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. "Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you'll get canceled," he said, per the New York Times. "I don't know if that's true, but I'm gonna find out." Chappelle was one of the headliners at the first-of-its-kind Saudi festival, which runs until Tuesday. The irony wasn't lost on the crowd or critics, the Times notes. While performers reveled in lampooning American politics on Saudi soil, activists pointed to the country's own sweeping crackdowns on dissent and tight control over speech at home.
Human Rights Watch called out the festival's "artwashing," accusing comedians of lending legitimacy to a government with a grim human rights record. Some stars declined to attend after contracts banned jokes about the monarchy, religion, or anything "embarrassing" to Saudi Arabia. Chappelle is one of more than 50 performers at the event, including Pete Davidson, Bill Burr, and Louis CK, per the Hollywood Reporter. Tim Dillon said he was dropped from the event after a joke he had made about migrant workers in the kingdom resurfaced. He said he had been offered $375,000 to perform, while others were offered up to $1.6 million.
The festival—part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 push to open up the kingdom—drew a mixed-gender, youthful audience to Riyadh's flashy Boulevard City, signaling major shifts in Saudi social life, the Times reports. Sex jokes bombed, but political jabs hit home. "I found it so interesting to hear political jokes targeting Trump and Charlie Kirk," Abdulrahman Mohammad, a 23-year-old dental student, told the Times, adding that it was "surprising to hear him talk about it in Riyadh, when just recently America canceled Jimmy Kimmel doing the same."
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Chappelle told the audience of around 60,000 he's worried that when he returns to America, "they're going to do something to me so that I can't say what I want to say." One thing he will definitely face is disapproval from some fellow comedians, who criticized performers who went to Riyadh as "sellouts." "The same guy that's gonna pay them is the same guy that paid that guy to bone saw Jamal Khashoggi and put him in a f----- suitcase," Marc Maron said on his podcast. "But don't let that stop the yucks, it's gonna be a good time!"
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