“But it didn’t happen to you,” I replied.

“I think what I’m ultimately trying to do is highlight all of those stories,” he said. “Building to what I think is a pointed argument,” as opposed to a “pointless riff” of jokes.

Minhaj has elided or concocted other details in his stories, often to place himself more squarely at the center of the action. “I haven’t talked about this publicly,” Minhaj says in “The King’s Jester,” about his attempt to interview Mohammed bin Salman in 2018. The Saudi crown prince was doing a U.S. public-relations blitz, meeting with Michael Bloomberg and Oprah, among others, and Minhaj set up a meeting at the Saudi Embassy in D.C. to discuss the prospect of a sit-down with him. Minhaj’s wife, he says, disapproved of his attempts to antagonize the Saudis, so he hid the visit from her. (A theme of the special is her resistance to his despot-baiting comedy stylings.) On Heilemann’s podcast, Minhaj said that his comedy “put my marriage through a lot, and ‘The King’s Jester’ is an exploration of how far I’m willing to take a joke.”