SNL’s New Cast Member Shane Gillis Under Fire For Past Use of Racial Slur
It is the best of times for Shane Gillis, it is the worst of times for Shane Gillis.
The stand-up comedian fulfilled the dream of nearly every comedic performer when he was named as a new cast member for Saturday Night Live. It goes without saying that becoming a cast member or SNL is often tied to fame and fortune and everything that goes with it…
But on the day that Gillis learned perhaps the best news of his life, he also found himself embroiled in a controversy surrounding past racist comments he made in a podcast.
Writing for the New York Times, Nancy Coleman reports:
A comedian named on Thursday as one of the newest “Saturday Night Live” cast members made racist remarks mocking Chinese people and used a racial slur in a podcast episode last year.
The comments were uncovered by a comedy journalist several hours after NBC announced that the comedian, Shane Gillis, 31, would be joining the cast along with two other performers, one of them the show’s first Chinese-American player.
In the episode, which was also recorded on video and uploaded to YouTube a year ago, Gillis, a stand-up comedian in New York, and his podcast partner, Matt McCusker, mimicked caricatures of Chinese accents. During their conversation, which was often vulgar, Gillis also called it a “hassle” to try to speak with a waiter in a Chinese restaurant and made other offensive remarks, including a slur referring to Chinese people.
Gillis responded to reports of his past comedic indiscretions on Twitter, with an earnest apology:
— Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) September 13, 2019
While it appears that the YouTube channel for the podcast that featured the offending source material has been sanitized you can see the offending clip below via Twitter users @sasimons:
the podcast channel appears to have been scrubbed; this is the only episode up right now
— Seth Simons (@sasimons) September 12, 2019
