Comedian Shane Gillis has returned to host “SNL” after being fired from the cast in 2019 for having made racist, homophobic and misogynistic remarks.
During the Feb. 24 episode, Gillis didn’t shy away from the elephant in the room, briefly acknowledging his firing in his opening monologue.
“I’m here,” he said. “Most of you probably have no idea who I am. I was actually — I was fired from this show a while ago. But, you know, 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.”
Gillis was fired from the show just one week after it was announced that he would join the SNL cast. A statement was released on behalf of longtime executive producer Lorne Michaels addressing 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 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.”
Gillis also commented on his firing on social media: “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.”
Since his firing in 2019, Gillis has co-hosted the popular podcast “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” and landed a Netflix comedy special “Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs,” which was released in 2023.
Watch Gillis’ full opening monologue below.
