Lorne Michaels revealed once and for all that it was NBC’s decision to fire Shane Gillis from “Saturday Night Live” after the comedian’s past homophobic comments and racist remarks about Asians surfaced online.
“That was very strong from the people in charge,” the “SNL” creator explained in an interview with The Wall Street Journal out Thursday. “Obviously I was not on that side, but I understood it.”
In 2019, Gillis was announced as a new cast member on the NBC late night sketch comedy series, but was fired just days later when an episode of his podcast “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” re-surfaced that featured the comedian using racist slurs. At the time, it seemed as if Michaels could have been the one who made the call to drop him from the program.
In response to his firing, Gillis wrote that he was “happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said” and referred to himself as a “comedian who pushes boundaries.” He has maintained that the jokes that led to his firing were misquoted and taken out of context.
Michaels, who previously stated that Gillis’ firing was in part due to threats from advertisers as “200 Asian companies were going to boycott the show,” went on to add that he was still “angry” about the situation.
“He said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world,” Michaels told the WSJ. “I was angry. I thought, ‘You haven’t seen what we’re going to do and what I’m going to try to bring out in him, because I thought he was the real thing.’”
Gillis was, however, invited back to host “SNL” during Season 49. Additionally, he was never fully canceled as his Netflix series “Tires” was picked up for a second season ahead of its premiere earlier this year.
