The tragedy of Fahad Albutairi and Loujain al-Hathloul

By Kirk Rudell January 4

Kirk Rudell is a writer and producer based in Los Angeles. This essay was adapted from his recent Twitter thread.

A couple years ago, when I was writing for “American Dad!,” I needed an Arabic speaker for a small part. Our casting director recommended a Saudi comedian named Fahad Albutairi, who happened to be in Los Angeles for a couple of months shooting a television show. I looked him up. He was the first Saudi stand-up comedian to appear on stage professionally in the kingdom, the “Jerry Seinfeld of Saudi Arabia.” He had a couple million Twitter followers. (He has none now; I’ll get to that.) He was, frankly, way more interesting than the part.

The day of the recording, I walked to the booth to meet Fahad and direct his session. It was just a couple lines, so I figured I’d say hi, run it a few times, and we’d both be on our way. Fahad was standing with a woman, whom he introduced as his wife, Loujain. She didn’t know anyone in LA, so she was tagging along with Fahad for the day. They were young, cool, cosmopolitan and incredibly nice. I liked them right away. We chatted.

I asked Fahad about being a Saudi comedian — about doing something that didn’t exist before in his country. I had recently met with Trevor Noah to talk about a project, and he spoke about growing up in South Africa without access to Western pop culture. So he never internalized the standard rhythms of stand-up comedy — he and other South Africans created their own. Fahad was fascinated. Yes, he had had a similar experience. But his voice was also shaped by the fact that comedy in the kingdom was .?.?. dangerous.

So now we dipped into politics. I mentioned the young, “progressive” Prince Mohammed bin Salman. All the press in the United States seemed pretty positive about the guy. He was meeting people in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Were Fahad and Loujain feeling optimistic about the future of Saudi Arabia? They were hopeful but warned there was still a long way to go on human rights. Which is why they’d recently moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. “Huh. Well at least you know you’re safe,” I said. With literally millions of fans, he was too high-profile to mess with. I looked at Loujain. “And his fame covers both of you, right?” They looked at each other. “Oh, she’s much more famous than me in the Middle East,” he said. And then I realized who she was .?.?. one of the women’s rights activists who had been arrested for driving in Saudi Arabia.

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