Tim Dillon Fired From Riyadh Comedy Festival for Saudi Slavery Remarks: ‘They Didn’t Like That’

Tim Dillon volition not beryllium traveling to the Riyadh Comedy Festival adjacent month. The California comedian and big of The Tim Dillon Show podcast says helium was fired from the Oct. 8 Saudi Arabia festival for comments helium made astir the state connected Joe Rogan‘s podcast.

Besides losing a $375,000 payday (an magnitude Dillon confirmed to Rogan), helium besides mislaid a adjacent warm-up gig successful Dubai 2 nights earlier his Riyadh quality aft mixing up the Arab emirate with Abu Dhabi (the rival cities are some portion of the United Arab Emirates).

“I mixed them up — seemingly this is simply a large woody implicit there. This is simply a existent problem,” helium said connected a caller occurrence of his podcast. “This is not a malicious slander. It’s a mistake.”

The Riyadh Comedy Festival — which mostly takes spot astatine the Bakr Al-Sheddi Theatre and ANB Arena from Sept. 25 to Oct. 9, features a fig of apical tier comedians including Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Gabriel Iglesias, Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart, Jeff Ross, Chris Distefano, Tom Segura, Jo Koy, Sam Morril, Hannibal Buress, Andrew Schultz, Sebastian Maniscalco, Whitney Cummings, Jimmy Carr, Louis CK, Pete Davidson, Russell Peters and Chris Tucker.

“Supposedly, MBS is simply a instrumentality of mine,” Dillon said 2 weeks agone connected the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, referring to Saudi caput of authorities Mohammed Bin Salman.

Dillon was reportedly fired from the festival for claiming that Saudi Arabia relies connected enslaved labour — a arguable instrumentality connected the country’s overseas laborers laws that immoderate groups, including Human Rights Watch, person criticized arsenic “slavery-like.” Legally, slavery was abolished successful the Kingdom successful the 1960s.

Dillon said the slavery jokes were a misunderstanding with his Saudi hosts, saying connected his podcast, “I was defending them for having slaves. I virtually said, ‘Slaves are hard workers and for the astir portion agreeable.’ But they didn’t similar that.”

“You tin virtually enactment idiosyncratic excessively much,” helium added. “In life, this happens. Too galore compliments; excessively overmuch enactment — and past they crook connected you.”

He clarified his comments further, noting, “If one was a enslaved — not that I privation to beryllium one, but if I was and I built this truly bully thing, I mightiness accidental to my enslaved children, ‘Daddy built that,'” concluding, “Apparently this got to the radical successful Saudi Arabia and they were unhappy astir it.”

The Riyadh Comedy Festival opens Sept. 25 with performances by Burr, Maz Jobrani and Andrew Santino and Bobby Lee from the Bad Friends podcast. More here.