Just days after being named to the cast of "Saturday Night Live," Shane Gillis was fired after receiving criticism for videos that revealed the comedian using slurs and offensive language, program officials announced Monday.
"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining 'SNL,' a show spokesman representing executive producer Lorne Michaels 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 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."
Gillis, 31, was criticized after a video of a podcast surfaced, where Gillis used a slur in referring to Chinese people and mocked a caricatured accent of a Chinese person speaking English, according to to The New York Times.
The podcast, on a YouTube channel called "Matt and Shane's Podcast," was dated Sept. 26, 2018, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In a separate podcast from 2018, Gillis and co-host Matt McCusker rank how funny comedians are by race and use homophobic slurs, according to the Reporter. In another podcast recording, Gillis used the slurs to describe comedy filmmaker/producer Judd Apatow and comedian Chris Gethard, the Times reported.
Gillis stated on his Twitter account last week, tweeting "I'm a comedian who pushes boundaries. I sometimes miss. If you go through my 10 years of comedy, most of it bad, you're going to find a lot of bad misses. 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."
After "SNL" announced his firing, Gillis issued an apology on Twitter, saying he respected the show's decision.
"I was funny enough to get SNL. That can't be taken away."
— Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) September 16, 2019
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