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Comedian and actor Bill Burr has responded to the backlash he received for performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia. Burr was just one of many A-list comics to appear at the festival, which was held earlier this month.
Bill Burr’s first public comments about his performance at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia came during a live taping of Conan O’Brien’s massively popular podcast, Conan Needs a Friend.
The episode was taped at the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, October 5, marking Burr’s first public apperance after his set in Riyadh.
Bill Burr calls people who are angry about him performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival ‘sanctimonious c—s’
“The general consensus is, ‘How dare you go to that place and make those oppressed people laugh, you f—ing piece of s—. I can’t believe you went to that place. I can’t find it on a map, and this bot said I was upset about it so now I am,” Burr said.
“It’s one thing to wear clothes made by sweatshop labor. It’s quite another to go to the factory and make ’em laugh. I can’t believe how much anger I had about this issue after it went viral.”
“All of these sanctimonious c—- out there… who don’t really sincerely give a s—. If you actually give a f— about those people and how they’re living over there, there’s gonna have to be these types of things to pull them in,” he continued.
During the live podcast taping with Conan, Burr also added that America is becoming more like Saudi Arabia than we realize.
“Jesus Christ, we’re f—— grabbing moms and dads and sticking ’em in a van for making illegally made f—— tacos to go to alligator Alcatraz,” Burr said of the ICE raids.
“It’s f—— insane. It’s insane. And someday they’re gonna be out of brown people to put in those vans, they’re still gonna have the vans, so you shouldn’t be feeling comfortable about it. Thinking that you’re not gonna be in it.”
Burr’s apperance on Conan Needs A Friend apparently wasn’t such a hit, however, as rumors suggest that a sizable portion of the audience walked out of the taping after it was revealed that he was the guest.
Conan O'Brien had Bill Burr as a surprise guest on a live taping of his podcast and apparently half the audience walked out when he came out and it was such a disaster that they quietly released the episode on a Wednesday morning
— Himbo President 🇵🇸 (@himbopresident) October 8, 2025