Shane Gillis is no longer going to be on Saturday Night Live, a spokesperson for the show said in a statement on behalf of Lorne Michaels on Monday.
Gillis' parting with SNL came four days after the announcement first saying he'd be joining the show. Shortly after the news dropped, clips of Gillis began circulating online that showed him making racist and homophobic comments.
The spokesperson said that they did not properly vet Gillis and were unaware of these remarks.
"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL," the statement reads. "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."
As the news of his departure hit, Gillis released his own statement on Twitter, saying that he felt it was ridiculous to make a statement about his racist and homophobic comments and his parting with SNL.
Tweet may have been deleted
Gillis said he respects Saturday Night Live's decision and ended his statement with a joke about how he was more of a Mad TV guy.
After videos of Gillis' racism and homophobia came to light, he faced a windfall of criticism online with many people upset at his use of multiple slurs in public videos as recently as 2018. He made a statement on Twitter after these videos surfaced as well, saying that he pushes boundaries and would be happy to apologize to "anyone who's actually offended by anything I've said," without actually making a concrete apology.
Topics SNL
