Shane Gillis is BACK on Saturday Night Live… But he doesn’t want you looking into his history with the show!
On Saturday, the stand-up comedian took the Studio 8H stage to host the famed sketch comedy show — but couldn’t do it without addressing his inneresting past… In his opening monologue, the 36-year-old admitted he was “fired from the show a while ago,” but implored fans to not look into it:
“Don’t look that up, please. If you don’t know who I am, please don’t Google that. It’s fine. Don’t even worry about it.”
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He joked:
“I don’t know, this is — I probably shouldn’t be up here, honestly.”
If you didn’t know, Shane was hired as a cast member for season 45 of the show. However, before it premiered, unsavory clips of him making racist, homophobic, and misogynistic jokes surfaced and he was let go. At the time, longtime SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels addressed the situation:
“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.”
Shane, himself, also addressed his firing at the time:
“It feels ridiculous for comedians to be making serious public statements but here we are. I’m a comedian who was funny enough to get SNL. That can’t be taken away. Of course I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL, but I understand it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made. I’m honestly grateful for the opportunity. I was always a mad tv [sic] guy anyway.”
With that context in mind, he still chose to make some eyebrow-raising jokes — some about all little boys being their mom’s “gay best friend” until a certain time in their lives, and controversially used the R-slur while making a joke about his niece who has Down’s syndrome.
Watch his full monologue (below):
Since then, Shane has built his career as a podcaster and become a more prolific stand-up comedian… So we guess the show was ready to give him a crack. See all of the highlights (below):
Rapper 21 Savage was also in the house as this week’s musical guest! Ch-ch-check out his two performances with assists from Brent Faiyaz and Summer Walker (below):
How do YOU feel about this week’s episode, Perezcious readers? Was it the right call to bring back Shane? Let us know down in the comments!
[Image via NBC/Peacock]
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