{"id":16377,"date":"2026-07-25T03:42:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=16377"},"modified":"2026-07-25T03:42:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:42:46","slug":"weird-al-yankovic-turned-down-seven-figure-riyadh-comedy-festival-gig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=16377","title":{"rendered":"Weird Al Yankovic Turned Down Seven-Figure Riyadh Comedy Festival Gig"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tFollowing Saudi Arabia\u2019s controversial debut comedy festival last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/weird-al-yankovic\/\" id=\"auto-tag_weird-al-yankovic\" data-tag=\"weird-al-yankovic\">Weird Al Yankovic<\/a> is discussing his decision not to join the star-studded lineup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tThe 5x Grammy-winning parody musician recently revealed that he turned down \u201cseven figures\u201d to perform at the <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/riyadh-comedy-festival\/\" id=\"auto-tag_riyadh-comedy-festival\" data-tag=\"riyadh-comedy-festival\">Riyadh Comedy Festival<\/a>, explaining it would have made him \u201cfeel icky\u201d to accept Saudi money for his comedic services.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cI was invited to the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which is something that I obviously did not want to do,\u201d he told Pennsylvania\u2019s <em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/triblive.com\/aande\/music\/weird-al-yankovic-gets-bigger-and-weirder-in-a-tour-headed-to-pittsburgh\/\">Tribune-Review<\/a><\/em>. \u201cThey offered me, I\u2019m not going to say how much, but it was seven figures to do one show, which is way more than I\u2019ve ever been offered in my life to do a show.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tYankovic continued, \u201cBut I just couldn\u2019t be part of that. I\u2019m not dissing anybody that took the money because I\u2019m sure everybody that went there got a lot of money. I\u2019m sure they had their own reasons and justifications for doing it. But I\u2019m doing enough that I don\u2019t need to take any amount of money if it makes me feel icky, and that kind of did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tAfter revealing he turned down a \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2026\/07\/weird-al-yankovic-turned-down-nice-pile-money-ai-ad-1236972893\/\">nice pile of money<\/a>\u201d to appear in an AI ad, Yankovic quipped, \u201cI wish people would offer me things that I didn\u2019t feel bad about accepting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tOther comedians have previously <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2025\/09\/marc-maron-shane-gillis-zach-woods-slam-riyadh-comedy-fest-1236556620\/\">called out their peers<\/a> who agreed to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which ran Sept. 26 to Oct. 9, noting Saudi officials\u2019 roles in 9\/11 and the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as the human rights abuses committed by Saudi minister of entertainment, Turki Al-Sheikh, who is behind the festival.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tDeadline exclusively <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2025\/07\/riyadh-comedy-festival-kevin-hart-tom-segura-wme-consulting-1236455168\/\">announced the initial Riyadh Comedy Festival lineup<\/a> last July, which 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, Chris Tucker and more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following Saudi Arabia\u2019s controversial debut comedy festival last year, Weird Al Yankovic is discussing his decision not to join the star-studded lineup. The 5x Grammy-winning parody musician recently revealed that he turned down \u201cseven figures\u201d to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, explaining it would have made him \u201cfeel icky\u201d to accept Saudi money for&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2238886680.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}