In the wake of the controversies surrounding Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival, actress and activist Leah Remini shared her full remarks from the 2024 Democracy in Saudi Arabia Summit and urged Westerners not to “launder” the regime of Saudi Arabian Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS).
“I was honored to give the keynote speech at the Democracy in Saudi Arabia Summit and wanted to share my full remarks,” Remini wrote Sunday on Threads. “The Saudi Crown Prince is trying to whitewash his regime’s tyranny by weaponizing culture and popular culture against his citizens. We must not launder MBS’ regime and that includes entertainers, politicians, and the media.”
The Quest for Democracy in Saudi Arabia summit was held in Maryland in May 2024. Remini was one of the conference’s featured speakers. The outrage sparked recently by the Saudi government’s Riyadh Comedy Festival seems to have inspired her to share her speech from the event online.
“I don’t believe it’s my business or any non-Saudi person’s business to dictate what the Saudi government should look like,” Remini said in her speech. “Those decisions are solely up to the Saudi people. But I do believe every human being has the right and responsibility to advocate for every other human being’s most basic freedoms.”
“Under the rule of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, those rights have been diminished more than ever, and MBS has turned the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into a brutal police state while selling it to the world as a reformed, mostly secular monarchy,” Remini continued. “He has fooled influential people in the media, sports and politics into normalizing him and his regime.”
Remini’s posting of her speech comes just a few days after Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival began on Sept. 26. The festival, which is expected to last until Oct. 9, boasts a lineup of high-profile American and British comedians, including Bill Burr, Pete Davidson, Aziz Ansari, Hannibal Buress, Jimmy Carr, Dave Chappelle, Sam Morrill and Tom Segura.
The festival’s participants have come under heavy fire from comedians who refused to take part in it, including Marc Maron and Atsuko Okatsuka, the latter of whom shared the censorship rules that were included in her original invite. Shane Gillis also revealed on an episode of “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” that he was offered a “significant bag” to perform at the festival but took a “principled stand” against doing so.
“I know how incredibly lonely it can feel to look around and see people you used to admire and respect cave and show up in Saudi Arabia to take a check and abandon even the most basic principles they always claim to hold,” Remini said her in 2024 speech. “I believe that Saudis, like the rest of us, deserve to be entertained, whether it’s via sporting events, concerts or movies.”
“But what is objectionable is when people help soften this regime’s reputation around the world,” the actress noted. “I’m never going to accept that. You’re never going to see me laundering the image of the Crown Prince.”
Throughout her speech, Remini drew parallels to the conditions in Saudi Arabia and those she experienced growing up in Scientology. She called out Americans’ tendency to ignore the living conditions of those who live separate from them.
“Westerners love to look at the simple cultural freedoms and use those freedoms as a justification to abandon the citizens of another country in their fight for freedom,” she remarked. “A woman having the right to drive means nothing if she doesn’t have the right to speak her mind without fear of punishment.”
