“Saturday Night Live” has fired one of its most recent hires, Shane Gillis, just days after videos of comedian using racial slurs in a September episode of his podcast surfaced.
Gillis was one of three new cast members announced last week as the 45th season of “Saturday Night Live” is set to kick off Sept. 28 on NBC.
“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” a spokesperson for the late night show said in a statement Monday. “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.”
On Thursday, clips began to surface from Gillis’ podcasts and other media in which he repeatedly used racist, homophobic, and misogynistic language. The video recording of the podcast has since been deleted from YouTube.
— Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) September 16, 2019
Gillis responded to the firing in a tweet (above) Monday.
“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 guy anyway.”
