Shane Gillis seems to stir up controversy everywhere he goes, and yet, somehow, he’s still one of the most successful podcasters and comedians out there.
Gillis first made national headlines back in 2019 when he was fired from Saturday Night LiveSaturday Night Live before ever taking the stage as a cast member because of offensive comments he made on his podcast.
Despite that, he’s managed to score comedy specials, TV shows, and even multiple hosting gigs on SNL.
But who is the controversial comedian, and what led to him getting fired?
Who is Shane Gillis?
Gillis is a comedian, podcaster, and actor who found early success when he started doing stand-up comedy in 2012. In 2017, he started the podcast Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast with his co-host and fellow comedian Matt McCusker. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, the successful podcast was the most subscribed to Patreon account in 2024, wracking up more than 71,000 paying listeners.
After a controversy that led to his firing from SNL, Shane went on to put out multiple comedy specials, had a recurring role on Pete Davidson’s TV show Bupkis, and co-created and starred in the show Tires for Netflix, which has been renewed for a second season.
Gillis will also appear in the upcoming movie Easy Waltz — in a role that was originally written for Norm Macdonald prior to his death — and he stared in Bud Light’s Super Bowl LIX commercial.
Why was Shane Gillis fired from SNL?
Gillis was fired as a cast member on SNL in 2019 before his debut episode after a recent podcast episode resurfaced where the comic could be heard making racist remarks, NBC News reports.
Just days after it was announced that he was hired as a new cast member for season 45 of SNL, a clip of him using an anti-Asian slur and racist imitation of an Asian accent went viral.
The clip came from an episode of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast where the two hosts were “joking” about Chinatown. “Let the f------ ch---- live there,” Gillis said in the podcast.
In light of his racist “jokes,” Gillis was fired and never appeared as an SNL cast member. In an interview, he gave a weak apology for his offensive comments but said he planned to keep making taboo jokes.
"I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries,” he wrote on Twitter (now X). “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."
A spokesperson for SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels told NBC News that they were unaware of his history of racist jokes when he was hired. “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,” the spokesperson said.
Gillis also faced backlash when listeners discovered he had used homophobic slurs during a bit on his podcast about “hot Southern boys” being sexually assaulted during the Civil War. On past episodes of his podcast, he can also be heard calling gay people "fa----ts" and transgender women "ladyboys."
Why was Shane Gillies asked to host SNL?
Years after getting canned before ever appearing on the show, Gillis hosted an episode of SNL in 2024, but his monologue went over like a lead balloon.
He mocked his dad for being a volunteer assistant girls’ high school basketball coach, talked about his relatives with Down syndrome, and compared spending time with his sister’s diverse family to “the craziest Uber pool you’ve ever been [in],” before making a bizarre gay “joke.”
“You remember when you were a little boy and you loved your mom, you thought she was the coolest? You remember when you were gay?” he asked. “Do you remember when you were just a gay little boy? Every little boy is just their mom’s gay best friend. There’s literally zero difference. I was gay for my mom.”
Despite his first appearance not being well received — critics said he “struggled” and “bombed” — he has been asked back and will host for the second time on March 1.
He may have been fired, but Michaels has stood up for the comedian and may be behind him being asked back twice. “I thought, You haven’t seen what we’re going to do, and what I’m going to try to bring out in him, because I thought he was the real thing,” Micheals said according to Forbes, who also reported that the SNL creator and producer criticized people for “judging everybody on every position they have on every issue as opposed to, ‘Are they any good at the thing they do?’”
Did Bowen Yang get Shane Gillis fired from SNL?
Bowen Yang, who is in his sixth season as an SNL cast member, started as a writer on the long-running comedy show before getting hired as a cast member at the same time as Gillis. Since Yang is the show’s first Chinese-American cast member and an out gay man, and Gillis has made both anti-Asian and homophobic “jokes,” it has led to people assuming Yang was behind Gillis being fired. But SNL creator Michaels has blamed the executives at the top for Gillis being asked to leave, Entertainment Weekly reports.
It’s been nearly seven years since Gillis was fired, but Yang is still being blamed. Just this week, ahead of Gillis returning to host SNL yet again, he clapped back at someone who took to social media to stir up the controversy again and place the blame at Yang’s feet — something the Las Culturistas host won’t put up with anymore.
Does Shane Gillis have a Netflix special?
In 2023, Gillis released his Netflix exclusive comedy special, Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs, which the New York Times called “dumb and smart, cocky and self-mocking, homophobic but relentlessly self-aware.”
Shane Gillis will appear on SNL on March 1, 2024, on NBC or stream it on Peacock and Hulu.
