- I made fun of them for--women weren't allowed to drive
to drive in Saudi Arabia, and I was going in on it.
I'm like, "Well, maybe you should let the women drive,
'cause you guys drive like shit," you know,
"And that"--so I was like, "Oh, my God.
"This is payback. I'm gonna lose my head,
and they're gonna blame fucking ISIS or some shit," right?
[dark electronic music]
♪
- Oh! Ahh!
♪
Ugh! Oh! Ahh!
Augh!
♪
[cheers and applause]
Super stoked to get this guy.
Everybody fucking loves him.
One of the biggest comics in the world, to be honest.
Please give it up for Mr. Russell Peters, everybody.
[cheers and applause]
♪
- I've been doing stand-up for 27 years,
so when you're doing it this long and you start
to progress, things in your life change.
Like, my situation changed from being this broke brown kid
in Canada to a doing-okay kid in L.A. now, right?
Or old-ass man, but whatever.
And I get to go around the world.
That's the beauty of what I do for a living
is I get to go around the world, and I go to places
that the American media tells you not to go to
because they want you to be scared
and keep your moustache like that.
[laughter]
So recently I was in the Middle East.
I can't say which country because I signed an NDA, but...
[laughter]
But I was there. I did a show in this place in the Middle East.
Well, I can say this.
I was in Saudi Arabia, and-- and it was very different.
I'd never been to Saudi Arabia before,
because I was always scared to go to Saudi Arabia.
Everybody was like, "Saudi Arabia."
I'm like, "Fuck you."
And that's based on watching the news in America, and I'm like,
"Well, you better not go to Saudi Arabia
"or they'll tie you to two different camels
and they'll make them run away," you know what I mean?
That's all you ever hear about Saudi Arabia is that torture
and beheadings and they'll kill you
and watch what you say.
That's all true.
[laughter]
But--but you don't see it.
In the Middle East, it's very quiet.
It's like, "No, don't tell anyone what we do.
Just..."
so anyway, I do the show there, great--had a great time.
There's 10,000 princes is Saudi Arabia,
so there's a lot of fucking royalty just running around
Saudi Arabia.
So I do a show.
I'm tripped out because when I get onstage,
the audience is segregated.
Not--not like this.
Not like hipsters on one side and, you know, like--
but it's, like, it's women on one side and men on the other.
And--because they're not allowed to be together.
And I was like, "Why can't the women be together
with the men?"
And this is the honest answer I got.
I thought it was fucking hilarious.
I go, "Hey, why can't the women and the men be together?"
"'Cause they'll go crazy, want to fuck everybody."
I'm like-- [laughs]
You're--it's not the men that are gonna go crazy,
just so you're aware of this.
These women are lunatics apparently,
and they're just gonna fuck everybody, right?
So I go, "All right. Good plan."
Right?
And so we do the show,
and then one of the other princes
who was a little more higher up, I guess,
in the prince hierarchy, hears about the show
and tells the other prince-- I guess,
who's his cousin--and he goes,
"I want a private show with Russell."
And then he comes to me at the--they have this little
after-party for me, and you would think, like--
you're like, "All right."
You know, 'cause it's Saudi Arabia,
you're gonna be like, "There's mad bitches.
They got the doors closed."
Fucking two chicks in the whole room,
and they're, like, sisters of somebody in there, right?
You're like, "Ah, come on, guy."
And then there's guys-- guys are dancing with guys.
It's not--it's weird.
It's not, like-- but it's not like here.
You know, 'cause over--here in America, we've lost the idea
of what dancing is, you know?
White people have won the dancing war.
I mean, let's be honest.
Like, when you go to, like, an EDM thing,
everybody's just jumping up and down,
and nobody's dancing anymore.
That means white people won.
[laughter]
And it's either that or you're just fucking
ass fucking everybody all night, know what I mean?
[laughter]
So when I say the guys are dancing on each other,
they're not like, "Hey, bro, do it."
You know, like, they're just--
I'm not exaggerating.
There was a dude doing a dance--
[laughs]
It looked like a camel.
That's what--that's what his dance--his dance was this.
[laughter]
He was fucking--I was like, "Is that how you pick up chicks
over here?"
"One hump or two?" You know?
And then-- [laughter]
So anyway the other prince calls this prince and he's like,
"Private show tomorrow," and then my brother,
who's my manager, is like, "All right, well,
"let me talk to him,
and then we can sort the details out."
And I go--I go, "I'm scared about this, 'cause we're already
here, and, you know, we already don't know enough about these
people, but..." and then he comes over, and he talks to
him, and he's like, "Oh, shit. That's a lot of money."
[laughter]
So I go, "Uh, yeah, we'll do that show, right?"
And then my brother goes, "Okay, well, we're gonna need lights.
"We're gonna need the cameraman. We're gonna need the DJs.
We're gonna need the opening act."
And he's like, "No. Just Russell."
And I'm like, "Oh, fuck. All right."
And he goes, "Has to be private event."
And I go, "All right.
Well, can you give me any information?"
"No information."
I'm like, "Well, how many people?"
He goes, "It's a very small party for the prince."
And I'm like, "Okay."
And I'm thinking small, all right?
Private thing.
Maybe 50 to 100 people, right?
I've done worse.
27 years of stand-up, I've done shows
where there's two people in the audience.
I literally put the mic down and just sat with them.
I was like, "All right, listen.
"It's--it's fucking stupid for me to try and--
uh, what do you do?"
You know, so...
so...
So I go, "How many people?"
And they go, "Maybe 10 to 12."
I'm like, "Oh, come on, guy," right?
"This is ridiculous."
And then my brother goes, "Doo-doo-doo," and I go,
"That's a lot of money. Yeah, you're right.
Let's--let's do it."
So I go to the palace the next day, right?
And I get there, and they put us in, like, a waiting room,
and then this guy comes in, he goes, "Mr. Peters, please."
And my brother and I--'cause, you know, obviously he's got
the same last name--we both get up, and he goes, "No, no.
You stay. Just him."
And--and I'm thinking, "Great, I'm gonna get beheaded
or some shit," right?
'Cause I talked mad shit the night before, right?
I mad fun of them for--women weren't allowed to drive
in Saudi--it's illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia,
and I was going in on it.
I'm like, "Well, maybe you should let the women drive,
'cause you guys drive like shit," you know,
"And that"--so I was like, "Oh, my God.
"This is payback. I'm gonna lose my head,
and they're gonna blame fucking ISIS or some shit," right?
So--so I go into this room, and it's a little-ass room
with a 110-inch TV, and I walk in,
and I figure 'cause the TV-- say this is the TV behind me--
I walk in the room and I'm like, "All right, I guess
"I'll just stand in front of this TV and do my little jokes
for these 11 people that are here."
And I walk in, and then the prince is sitting in the middle
of the room, and he gets up, and he goes,
"Hey, thanks for coming."
He doesn't sound like how you're thinking.
He's not like, "Please, please, entertain my friends," you know.
He's like, "Hey, thanks for coming," and I'm like,
"What the fuck is happening right now?"
[laughter]
Like, Ashton Kutcher's gonna come out.
Ha-ha! You've been punked!
You know. And then--
so he goes--he goes, "Sit down. Russell, please sit down."
So I sit down, and I just start making fun
of everybody in the room.
Literally, like, I'm like, "You, bam, you, bam,"
and then--and then the prince is, like, feeding my lines.
"That guy owns camels."
And I'm like--and I'm like, "You, fucking camel guy," and...
"How's it going?" And then--
I don't know if that's the greeting or the dance, right?
So...
you know, the prince, I'm making fun of him.
I start making fun of the prince.
I got a little fucking carried away.
And I knew when I was getting carried away 'cause everybody
went, "Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm."
[laughter]
"Mm-mm. Everybody else, no problem, but him? Mm-mm."
And there's--then the prince says to me--there's a guy
sitting beside me, and he goes, "Hey, Russell, that guy has one
of the only brown diamonds in the world."
And I go, "What the fuck is a brown diamond?"
He goes, "Show him, show him."
The guy takes off his ring and he's got this little
tiny-ass brown diamond on a ring, right?
And I go, "Oh, cool," and I go to put it on my hand,
and it wouldn't go past my pinkie nail.
And I'm like, how small are your hands?
[laughter]
And I look at the prince and I go,
"This guy's got child-like hands."
And the prince starts laughing, and then as a joke,
I grab the guy's wrist, right?
And I have friends that are magicians, and they taught me
how to take a watch off somebody's wrist, so I grab his
wrist, and I unlock his watch, and I pull it off, and I go,
"How small are your wrists?"
And then I go, "Oh, wow. Nice watch."
I go, "What is that, a Richard Mille?"
He goes, "No, it's Hublot."
And I go, "Oh, nice.
I go, "Here."
He goes, "Oh, keep it."
And I'm like, "Okay, buddy," so I put--I put the watch on,
and I'm doing--I start talking again, and about ten minutes
later, I go, "Hey, man, here's your watch."
He goes, "No, no. I give to you."
And I'm like, "What the fuck?"
[laughter]
So I start getting comfortable, right?
'Cause now I feel like I've done my job.
Everybody's laughed in this room, and then the prince goes,
"Come on, let's eat."
And I go, "All right, let's eat."
So we go to this other room to eat, and I'm sitting there,
and I go, "Hey, man, where's the guy that gave me the watch?"
He goes, "Oh, he left."
And I go, "But I've got his watch."
And he goes, "He gave it to you."
And I go, "All right."
And he goes, "That's how it is in Saudi Arabia.
"If you like something we have, and you say, 'I like that,'
We have to give it to you."
And I go, "Wow."
[laughter]
"This it the best palace I've ever been in."
Didn't work. Doesn't work on real estate apparently.
I should've complimented the Rolls-Royce they sent
to pick me up in though.
- Whoo! - God damn it,
I fucked that one up, right?
So--so I start, you know, the prince is really cool,
so I start talking to him.
I'm like, "Yo, did you know Osama bin Laden?"
'Cause he was from Saudi Arabia.
And I go, "Hey, did you know Osama bin Laden?"
He goes, "Well, I didn't know him, but I know is family."
I go, "Really?" He goes, "Yeah."
I mean, he was much older than I am.
I go, "Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense."
He goes, "Yeah, but his family is a very prominent family here
in Saudi Arabia."
They're--they built Saudi Arabia.
They were the construction company that built it.
He goes, "He went crazy.
"He went that way and the family was this way,
"and he was mad at Saudi Arabia and he was mad at his family,
so he went a little fucking cuckoo."
And then I was like, "That's amazing,"
'cause he's very--if you think about the breakdown
of Osama bin Laden, he's very similar
to Donald Trump.
[laughter]
He's--he's the spoiled brat
billionaire son of a developer
who's fucking mad at everybody, you know what I mean?
- Oh, my God.
[laughter]
[cheers and applause]
So I go--I go--he goes,
"Yeah, his family's very nice, actually."
And I go, "Really?"
He goes, "Do you want to meet his brother?"
And I'm like, "Fuck yeah, I do!"
I was like, "I so want to meet his brother!"
So... so goes, "Okay," and he says to some guy...
[speaking gibberish]
Random, like, "Oh, I don't know what he's saying,
but okay, sure," right?
And then--so the next day I get this call at my hotel
and they send the car-- the prince sends a car for me,
and I go, "What's this for?"
He goes, "Oh, you said you wanted to go see Saudi Arabia,
so he sent a car so you can go around and see everything."
And he walks out with me, and he's on his phone,
and he's like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh."
And he goes, "Hey, Russell,
do you still want to meet Osama's brother?"
[laughter]
And I'm like, "Fuck yeah, I do!"
And he goes, "Okay. One second.
Here." And I go, "What's this?"
And I won't say what--the guy's first name, 'cause, you know,
that'll give it away, but--but it says blank "bin Laden"
on the phone, right?
And I'm like--I go, "What's this?"
He goes, "It's Osama's brother."
And I go, "Holy shit."
So I go, "Uh, hello?"
And he goes-- this is exactly--
here's what you're expecting, right?
Osama bin Laden's brother to get on the phone, be like...
[in deep voice] "Russell, what are you doing, infidel?"
Right? So--
[laughter]
I go, "Hello?"
And this is what I hear on the other end.
"Hey, Russell." I go...
[laughter]
"What the fuck is going on here?"
[laughter]
He goes, "Yeah, it's--yeah, I'm blah, blah, blah bin Laden."
I go, "Yeah, and I see that on the phone."
He goes, "First of all, let me tell you,
a big fan of your stuff," and I'm like, "What the--
what the good fuck is going on over here?"
Right?
And he's like, "How long are you in town for?"
I go, "I'm leaving today."
He goes, "Yeah, I'm flying back tonight.
"Oh, man, I'm gonna miss you.
"Hey, stay in touch with me.
Take my number."
And I'm like, "What?"
"Yeah, take my number."
And I go, "All right."
And I go, "Just so you know, your name's going in
as Dave Smith on my phone."
[laughter and applause]
Thank you, guys. You were great.
[cheers and applause]
♪