New 'SNL' Hire Shane Gillis Under Fire for Racist, Homophobic Remarks
Published Sep 13, 2019
Shane Gillis was announced as one of Saturday Night Live's newest featured players yesterday (September 12), but he's already facing backlash for racist and homophobic remarks.On an episode of his podcast with Matt McCusker, Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, released just last year, Gillis is heard using racial and homophobic slurs. They go on to stereotype comedians based on their gender, sexuality and race.
In one segment of the show, Gillis uses offensive language to mock Chinese people for their culture, accents and food.
Later on, he refers to comedians with a confessional performance style as "white f*ggot comics" and calls them "fucking gayer than ISIS."
Gillis also ranks female comics according to their race, saying, "Black chicks are very funny, especially when they're sassy…. White chicks are literally the bottom. Ali Wong is making it so Asian chicks are funnier than white chicks."
He and his co-host then go on to talk about Sarah Silverman's physical appearance and attractiveness.
You can watch some of the material in question below via Seth Simons on Twitter.
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
Gillis has since responded to the controversy, sharing a note on Twitter. He claims that he's "happy to apologize to anyone who's actually offended by anything I've said," though he fails to actually make any kind of apology.
Read his statement below.
— Shane Gillis (@Shanemgillis) September 13, 2019