'Saturday Night Live' fires new hire Shane Gillis for making racist Asian jokes
Stand up comedian Shane Gillis was recently fired from his upcoming 'Saturday Night Live' stint on accounts of controversies surrounding the usage of racial slurs in the past. NBC made the announcement just a short while ago, accompanied by apologies to their viewers for any deficiencies in their vetting system, that allowed Gillis getting hired in the first place.
"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” an SNL spokesperson said on behalf of Lorne Michaels, reports Deadline. The statement continued: “We want SNL to have a variety of voices and points of view within the show, and we hired Shane on the strength of his talent as a comedian and his impressive audition for SNL. We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.”
After his firing by NBC was announced, Gillis slapped back on Twitter, saying “I was always a Mad TV guy anyway,” referring to SNL‘s one-time Fox rival.
Shortly after Gillis was announced as a new featured player for the upcoming season, a new video from 2018 surfaced online where Gillis can be seen using a racial slur against Asians. This led to days and days of continuous outrage from fans, with comments on the now-deleted video from a podcast called 'Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast' expressing severe outcry since SNL had just announced their first Asian-American cast member, Bowen Yang. Yang was going to be a new addition alongside Gillis, Yang and Chloe Fineman for the upcoming season.
Following that, other comments made by Gillis on several different editions of the same podcast were also unearthed, which made his SNL stint even more controversial going forward. With the backlash rising further on Gillis' offensive remarks that even involved Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, Gillis issued an apology on Instagram, writing: “I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said. My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks.”
Landing the SNL stint was a significant break for Gillis who has worked on the Comedy Central radio show 'The Bonfire'. He has also performed stand-up sketches at various New York clubs and appeared as a New Face at the 'Just for Laughs' comedy festival in Montreal.