Skip to content
Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy
Promotional art for The King's Jester
Cover image credit:

Source

The King's Jester

Hasan Minhaj

Netflix · 2022 · 68 min

High-concept storytelling about the dangerous search for online clout.

Watch on Netflix(opens in a new tab)

Hasan Minhaj approaches the stage less like a traditional stand-up and more like an energetic tech founder giving a high-stakes keynote. Backed by massive, glowing LED screens and dramatic lighting cues, he paces, pirouettes, and drops to the floor to deliver personal stories that trade on maximum theatricality. The heart of the hour lies in his confession that his pursuit of political influence and online clout began to put his family in actual danger, forcing him to weigh the value of a viral moment against real-world safety.

Filmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in late 2021 and released on Netflix in 2022, the show arrived after the cancellation of his satirical news series, Patriot Act. Minhaj uses the stage to reflect on that period of his career, recounting his face-to-face confrontation with Jared Kushner and a legal threat from a private equity firm. He balances these high-wire political anecdotes with intensely personal material, including a detailed recounting of his struggles with male infertility and a highly dramatized story about a childhood encounter with an undercover FBI informant at his local mosque.

The show received praise for its polished production and Minhaj’s charisma, though some critics felt his highly choreographed performance felt too clinical, treating stand-up like a scripted play. The theatrical style of storytelling later drew intense scrutiny when several of the show’s key autobiographical narrative arcs were revealed to be heavily embellished or fabricated.

The set list

6 bits

  1. Male infertility and varicocele repair

    Opens with a direct confession that he and his wife struggled for four years to conceive due to his own medical issues, detailing MDs, DOs, and surgery.

  2. Kumail Nanjiani getting swol

    Jokes about a muscular Kumail Nanjiani putting brown people to shame before pivoting to the serious stakes of comedy.

  3. Making a bomb joke to an FBI agent as a teenager

    Recounts a story from his youth about joking about a terrorist attack during post-9/11 FBI surveillance, claiming the joke saved his life.

  4. Mocking Jared Kushner at the Time 100 gala

    Describes deciding live on stage at an awards dinner to call out Jared Kushner's WhatsApp friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

  5. Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas

    Suggests at the top of his lungs that their wedding was fake because nobody could marry Nick Jonas unironically.

  6. The jurisprudence of jokes

    Analyzes cancel culture, exploring First Amendment rights versus the Overton window of socially acceptable speech and decorum.

How it plays

Tone
Sincere, brash, satirical, vulnerable, and moralistic.
On stage
Animated, rapid-fire, slick, and mega-earnest with a signature half-cry-half-laugh cadence and gravelly character voices, described by critics as oscillating between a daring loose cannon and an over-rehearsed motivational speaker.
Pace
High-octane, arms-flailing, and manic physical energy blended with meticulously rehearsed comedic pauses and shifts into dramatic storytelling mode.
About
fertility and male infertility, fatherhood, freedom of speech vs. acceptable speech, online clout and ego, the fallout of political satire

What the critics said

Critical response was generally positive to mixed; reviewers praised his engaging storytelling, vulnerability, and command of the crowd, while some found his delivery over-rehearsed, excessively slick, and weighed down by sentimental life lessons.

In the room: Rapt, highly responsive, cheering sentimental conclusions and readily yielding applause breaks and emotional reactions.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: qr.netflix.com, rottentomatoes.com, variety.com, indiewire.com, vulture.com, theguardian.com, metacritic.com, indianexpress.com, hollywoodreporter.com, consequence.net.

Backstory

Personal struggles with male infertility and early fatherhood, alongside personal blowback and safety threats to his family following his controversial 'Patriot Act' reporting on Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his self-described addiction to internet clout.

Details

Released
Taped
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Runtime
68 min
Where
Netflix
Director
Prashanth Venkataramanujam
Honors
Art Directors Guild Nomination
Topics
Before
Homecoming King (2017)
After
Off With His Head (2024)

More from Hasan Minhaj

If you liked this