Comedian Shane Gillis Cut from 'Saturday Night Live' Following Racial Comments
Shane Gillis will never get to take the stage at "SNL," because he's already been cut from the new cast before even taping an episode.
The famed sketch show announced Gillis' departure Monday afternoon in a statement:
"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL," a rep for the show told The Hollywood Reporter.
The statement, made on behalf of Lorne Michaels, 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 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."
As we reported, video surfaced of Gillis make racist comments towards the Asian community shortly after the stand-up was announced to be joining the cast of "SNL," along with two other comedians, one of them being Asian.
"Chinatown’s f--king nuts," Gillis said during a podcast from September, 2018.
He added, "Let the fucking ch---s live there."
At the time, Gillis issued a statement saying, "I'm happy to apologize to anyone who's actually offended by anything I've said."
After "SNL" announced he had been fired, Gillis issued another statement:
"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."
He added, "I'm a comedian who was funny enough to get SNL. That can't be taken away."
The 45th season of "Saturday Night Live" premieres September 28.
