SNL Fires Shane Gillis After Backlash Over Past Material

September 17, 2019 – Only days after the announcement that comedian Shane Gillis would be joining Saturday Night Live for its 45th season, NBC has fired him following the social media backlash over his past offensive and racist jokes.

Per a spokesperson for Saturday Night Live creator, Lorne Michaels:

“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL. 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. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.”