This week, Saturday Night Live announced some new cast members for the season which will start on the last Saturday of this month. SNL lost some great cast members at the end of last season, and Leslie Jones only announced her SNL retirement a few weeks ago. So, SNL had some openings. They hired Chloe Fineman, Bowen Yang and Shane Gillis. Bowen Yang is the first Asian-American SNL cast member, which… I didn’t really believe that he’s the FIRST?? Apparently, Fred Armisen is one-quarter Korean and Rob Schneider is one-quarter Filipino, so… Yang is the first non-mixed-race Asian cast member. Or something.
The conversation briefly centered around Yang and Asian representation and how people were like “seriously, it’s taken SNL THIS LONG?” And then people began doing basic research on Shane Gillis. Turns out he’s a f–king racist who used to do podcasts with his bros about how much he hates Chinatown and how funny it is to make fun of Chinese people (or “Ch-nks” as he and his bro calls them) with Chinese accents. This video is NSFW because of language and racism:
today SNL announced the hiring of its first cast member of East Asian descent, and also this guy pic.twitter.com/0FAGJZJUkK
— Seth Simons (@sasimons) September 12, 2019
this, again, is from September 2018 pic.twitter.com/inYFT22zjl
— Seth Simons (@sasimons) September 12, 2019
If you follow that thread, you’ll see that it’s not from some long-lost podcast from 30 years ago or whatever – that sh-t was last year. Ah, but we were so innocent in 2018, no one knew a thing about racism. Anyway, people were like “nope” and “fire him already, SNL.” So Shane Gillis decided to issue a statement:
— Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) September 13, 2019
“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.” Eat sh-t with that “I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said” bulls–t. He’s not f–king sorry. Fire this MAGA douche.
Also: Vulture has a story which does a deeper dive into – AGAIN – public statements Gillis has made in HIS OWN podcast (which he’s now deleted from YouTube), where he used homophobic slurs and mocked female comics. Vulture also spoke to sources in the Philadelphia comedy scene, where Gillis has worked for years. Kate Banford is co-owner of the Good Good Comedy Theatre and she said the theater “stopped working with him within the past few years because of racist, homophobic, and sexist things he’s said on and offstage.” His homophobia, racism and sexism was well-known among other comedians, and it really looks like SNL did not even do a bare-bones vetting process on this douche.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
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