The Shady Moon Behind Shane Gillis’ SNL Ousting: What the Stars—and Headlines—Never Told You
Added on May 18, 2025 inCelebrity News Cards, Entertainment News Cards
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Here’s one for you: What are the cosmic odds that Shane Gillis—once booted from Saturday Night Live a whopping five years ago amid a social media firestorm—ends up hosting the very same show, and doing it twice, no less? It’s like Mercury decided to throw a prank worthy of an SNL sketch right from the stars. Shane’s journey is wild: while he’s built serious cred as a stand-up with a 23-million-view YouTube special and a Netflix gig called Beautiful Dogs, that early firing seemed like curtains on his SNL dreams. Yet here we are, watching the universe—and the iconic New York sketch stage—play a wicked game of “remember me?” Maybe Sagittarius season’s adventurous spirit and love of boundary-pushing jokes is to blame (or credit). Shane’s story is one of second chances, controversies, and, well, the cosmic dance of public forgiveness. Curious how it all went down and came full circle?
LEARN MOREReading Time: 3 minutes
Shane Gillis was fired from Saturday Night Live, after being fired five years ago.
In a vacuum, this decision by producers should not come as a surprise.
Gillis is a very successful stand-up comedian, whose special on YouTube in 2021 has garnered over 23 million views.
Gillis also filmed a Netflix special titled “Beautiful Dogs,” which cemented his place as a major comedic talent.
And most recently, he agreed to a partnership with Bud Light for a stand-up tour.
Gillis is a funny guy, and he did a solid job, but here’s the thing:
Shane Gillis was hired to be a cast member by Saturday Night Live in 2019. And then he was fired a short time later.
Like, days later.
Ahead of Season 45, executives reversed course on Gillis’ hiring after a clip of him using an anti-Asian slur on his podcast went viral on Twitter.
On one installment of his podcast with fellow Matt McCusker, the hosts riffed about Chinatown, prompting to Gillis used the aforementioned slur while also imitating a Chinese accent by using the word “nooders” instead of noodles.
Gillis apologized and also said he was “comedian who pushes boundaries” that sometimes misses the mark, stating he may very continue to make jokes that some deemed to be inappropriate.
It may not have helped Shane’s cause back then that the show had also just hired Bowen Yang, its first-ever Asian-American cast member.
“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,” a spokesperson for executive producer Lorne Michaels told NBC News in 2019.
“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.”
Not permanently, though, apparently.
Gillis has hosted SNL not once but twice since he was unceremoniously removed from the show’s roster.
And it seems like there was zero drama on set.
So we guess any beef between the comic and the world’s most famous sketch show is officially … dead from New York.
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