Jimmy Kimmel pressed comedian Aziz Ansari this week about his decision to perform at Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival, with Kimmel calling the Saudi government a “pretty brutal regime” and questioning why Ansari would “take their money.”
Held in Saudi Arabia’s capital city, the Riyadh Comedy Festival began on Sept. 26 and ends Thursday. The event has hosted over 50 stand-up comedians from around the world, including big names such as Ansari, Kevin Hart, Pete Davidson and Dave Chappelle.
Those comedians have been facing backlash since accepting seemingly lucrative deals to perform in a country that has been criticized for its human rights violations.
In an interview on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Tuesday night, Kimmel pressed Ansari about his decision to take the stage in Riyadh.
“People, a lot of comedians especially, are very upset, because the people who paid the comedians to come to this are not good people,” Kimmel said. “It’s a pretty brutal regime. They’ve done a lot of horrible, horrible things.”
The talk show host then asked Ansari why he chose to appear at the event, stating that “people are questioning why you would go over there and take their money to perform in front of these people.”
Ansari said he put a lot of thought into the decision, explaining that he consulted his aunt, who used to live in Saudi Arabia.
“There’s people over there that don’t agree with the stuff that the government’s doing, and to ascribe like the worst behavior of the government onto those people, that’s not fair,” Ansari said his aunt pointed out. “Just like there’s people in America that don’t agree with the things the government is doing.”
Kimmel agreed that “we’re doing horrible things over here,” but pushed back on Ansari’s comparison between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
“They murdered a journalist,” Kimmel said, referring to Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Kimmel then asked Ansari if he had dealt “with those people specifically.”
Ansari replied, “No, I was just there to do a show for the people.”
The comedian further explained his thought process, saying his wife told him that “whenever there’s repressive societies like this, they try to keep things out — whether it’s rock ‘n’ roll music or blue jeans — because it makes people curious about outside ideas, outside values.”
Ansari, who is Indian American, went on to add that “to me, a comedy festival felt like something that’s pushing things to be more open and to push a dialogue.”
He then discussed how his own background compelled him to do the performance.
“For me, especially being me and looking the way I do and being from a Muslim background, it felt like something I should be a part of. And I hope it pushes things in a positive direction.”
Ansari did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment.
When speaking to Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw at the publication’s Screentime event on Wednesday, Kimmel — whose show recently returned to the air after it was briefly suspended by ABC and Disney over the host’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s assassination — addressed why he pressed Ansari on the matter.
“I wouldn’t have gone (to Riyadh), but I wanted to hear his reasons,” said Kimmel, who also noted that Ansari was aware he would ask him about the festival.
“Nothing’s black and white,” Kimmel added. “It’s not something I would do, but I do understand the idea that if we close ourselves off to the world … maybe that’s not good. I don’t know that my reasoning is correct reasoning.”
He drew a parallel to current U.S. politics. “We see it happening in this country, too,” he said. “We travel abroad, many of us don’t want to be held accountable for what our president does and says.”
Kimmel’s skepticism about the Riyadh Comedy Festival comes after many comedians have publicly criticized the event.
“WFT” podcast host Marc Maron ripped into the festival in a stand-up clip posted to Instagram on Sept. 23.
“I mean, how do you even promote that?” Maron said. “Like, ‘From the folks that brought you 9/11, two weeks of laughter in the desert. Don’t miss it.’”
Shane Gillis also condemned the event on his podcast, and said that the festival organizers “doubled the bag” after he declined to perform.
Human Rights Watch wrote in a press release published on Sept. 23 that the Saudi government is using the comedy festival “to deflect attention from its brutal repression of free speech and other pervasive human rights violations.”
The Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, which announced the festival in July, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.