Musician and comedy icon “Weird Al” Yankovic reportedly turned down an eye-watering “seven figures” to perform at Saudi Arabia’s controversial debut festival last year.
In an interview with Pennsylvania’s Tribune-Review, the Grammy-winning parody artist revealed that he declined an invitation to perform at the inaugural Riyadh Comedy Festival last year, and that the idea of accepting Saudi money as payment made him “feel icky.”
“I was invited to the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which is something that I obviously did not want to do,” Yankovic reportedly said. “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.”
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Yankovic went on to assert that he does not look down on any performers who chose to appear at the controversial festival, which hosted approximately 6,000 attendees, but insisted that he could not stomach the implications of appearing at the event.
“But I just couldn’t be part of that,” he continued. “I’m not dissing anybody that took the money because I’m sure everybody that went there got a lot of money. I’m sure they had their own reasons and justifications for doing it. But I’m doing enough that I don’t need to take any amount of money if it makes me feel icky, and that kind of did.”
The comedian previously made headlines after he declined to appear in an unspecified AI advertisement, saying he turned down yet another large sum by rejecting the offer.
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“I wish people would offer me things that I didn’t feel bad about accepting,” Yankovic told the Tribune-Review, referring to the AI ad.
Fox News Digital extensively covered the reaction in the comedy world to last year’s Riyadh Comedy Festival, in which key names within the industry offered harsh criticism toward comedians who chose to appear at the event.
At the time, “Real Time” host Bill Maher blasted comedian Dave Chappelle for his choice to perform at the festival.
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“Dave Chappelle … was in the press today saying that you can speak more freely over here than in America,” Maher told Louis C.K., who also made an appearance at the controversial event.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” C.K. replied.
“Oh, it’s not true,” Maher said, before suggesting that Chappelle perform a routine about the Prophet Muhammad to test his claims about free speech within the country.
C.K. quickly clarified that Chappelle is a Muslim, telling Maher, “So, it depends on who you are and what you want to talk about.”
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Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel also put comedian Aziz Ansari in the hot seat shortly after his performance at the festival.
“They murdered a journalist. These are not good people over there,” Kimmel told Ansari, in reference to the infamous state-sponsored murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018.
“I was just there to do a show for the people,” Ansari replied. “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. And 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’s pushing things to be more open and to push a dialogue.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Yankovic and the General Entertainment Authority in Saudi Arabia.
Fox News Digital’s Marc Tomasco contributed to this report.
