Weird Al says Riyadh Comedy Festival offered seven figures for one show
Weird Al Yankovic says he rejected a seven-figure Riyadh Comedy Festival offer because taking the gig made him feel “icky.”
By Poppy Nakagawa · Culture Writer
3 min read
Weird Al’s Riyadh Comedy Festival offer came with a jaw-dropping price tag: Yankovic says he was offered seven figures to perform one show in Saudi Arabia and said no.
The five-time Grammy-winning parody musician discussed the decision in an interview with Pennsylvania’s Tribune-Review, saying the proposed payday was bigger than any single-show offer he had received before.
“I was invited to the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which is something that I obviously did not want to do,” Yankovic told the newspaper. “They offered me, I’m not going to say how much, but it was seven figures to do one show, which is way more than I’ve ever been offered in my life to do a show.”
Why did Weird Al turn down the Riyadh Comedy Festival?
Yankovic said the money was not enough to get him past his discomfort with accepting a Saudi-backed comedy booking. He told the Tribune-Review he “just couldn’t be part of that.”
He also made clear he was not attacking performers who agreed to appear at the festival. “I’m not dissing anybody that took the money because I’m sure everybody that went there got a lot of money,” he said, adding that those performers likely had their own reasons for accepting.
Yankovic said he is doing well enough financially that he does not need to take a job that makes him uneasy. As he put it to the newspaper, he does not need “any amount of money if it makes me feel icky.”
What was the Riyadh Comedy Festival?
The Riyadh Comedy Festival was Saudi Arabia’s debut comedy festival, according to Deadline, and ran from Sept. 26 to Oct. 9. The event drew attention for booking a high-profile group of comics and entertainers.
Deadline reported that the lineup ultimately included Kevin Hart, Louis C.K., Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Pete Davidson, Hannibal Buress, Jack Whitehall, Zarna Garg, Gabriel Iglesias, Jim Jefferies, Jo Koy, Bobby Lee, Jeff Ross, Andrew Santino, Tom Segura and Chris Tucker, among others.
The festival also brought criticism from other comedians. Deadline reported that Marc Maron, Shane Gillis and Zach Woods were among those who called out peers who performed there, with critics pointing to what they described as Saudi officials’ roles in 9/11, the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and human rights abuses they attributed to Saudi entertainment minister Turki Al-Sheikh, who is behind the festival.
Yankovic’s Riyadh comments come after another recent refusal of a lucrative offer. Deadline reported earlier in July that he had also said no to a “nice pile of money” for an AI advertisement, saying he did not want to be the “poster boy for AI.”
After the AI ad story, Yankovic joked that he wished people would offer him things he did not feel bad about accepting.
This story draws on original reporting from Deadline.