Shane Gillis, one of three new hires announced by Saturday Night Live last week, has been fired by the show after several racist and homophobic podcasts surfaced.
Shortly after the casting announcement, a racist and homophobic segment featuring Gillis, began circulating on social media. In the clip, Gillis speaks with Matt McCusker on an episode of their podcast, Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast. In the clip, Gillis and McCusker call Chinese people “chinks”, imitate Asian people speaking, and mock Chinese restaurants. In another September 2018 podcast, Gillis and McCusker, referred to other comics as “faggots”, used gay as a pejorative, and made other slur.
SNL released a statement through a spokesman for Lorne Michaels: “After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL. 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 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.”
Gillis released his own statement on Twitter:
“It feels ridiculous for comedians to be making serious public statements but here we are. I’m a comedian who was funny enough to get SNL. That can’t be taken away. Of course I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL, but I understand it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made. I’m honestly grateful for the opportunity. I was always a mad tv [sic] guy anyway.”
