Saturday Night Live Fires Shane Gillis

By: Sep. 16, 2019
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Saturday Night Live Fires Shane Gillis

Deadline reports that previously-announced "Saturday Night Live" cast member Shane Gillis will no longer be joining the show. It was revealed in the past week that Gillis' comedy relies heavily on racial slurs.

"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL," said a spokesperson on behalf of series creator Lorne Michaels. "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 said on Twitter that he "was always a Mad TV guy anyway."

Clips from Gillis' podcast revealed that he has used racial slurs against Asians for the sake of comedy as recently as last year. Gillis attempted to apologize that night, saying, "I'm happy to apologize to anyone who's actually offended by anything I've said," adding, "My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks."

Read the original story on Deadline.



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