Many people have been fired from “Saturday Night Live” over the show's 50-year history. Whether Norm MacDonald was fired midseason because he refused to stop telling OJ Simpson jokes or Chris Farley was fired during one of the show's most turbulent periods of the '90s, SNL creator Lorne Michaels has seen many comedians come and go. However, only one person has been fired from “SNL” before even debuting on the show.
Comedian Shane Gillis was hired by “Saturday Night Live” in September 2019 and was supposed to join the cast as a featured actor for the show's 45th season, alongside Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman. However, after some racist and homophobic remarks emerged via “Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast,” which Gillis hosts alongside fellow comedian Matt McCusker, NBC and SNL parted ways with Gillis before the season began.
During the historic 50th season of “SNL,” showrunner and creator Lorne Michaels conducted intermittent interviews with some of the major media outlets about the show's legacy and the historic new season. While speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Michaels revealed that he was unhappy with Gillis' firing at the time:
“He said something stupid, but he blew up in the apocalypse. I was angry. I thought, you haven't seen what we're going to do, what I'm going to try to highlight. Because I thought he was the real person, and that was very powerful from the people in charge and obviously I wasn't on that side, but I understood it.
Shane Gillis could have been SNL's Donald Trump
Earlier this year, while speaking about Shane Gillis' firing, Lorne Michaels also told The Hollywood Reporter: “It was like an obsession. And the speed of the cancellation, and a lot of people deserved to be disliked, it wasn't a reign of terror, but it was like you were judging everyone by every position they had on every issue instead of “Are they any good at what are they doing?” doing?”
I'll be the first to contradict Michaels and remind him that these are not things he said years ago. These were comments on yesteryear podcasts at the time, and regardless of whether they were made as inflammatory or deliberately inappropriate bits, they just weren't perceived that way, and that matters. But the comedy scene can be a confusing realm for anyone looking in from the outside. Many comedians say intentionally offensive things over a short period of time. In fact, when Gillis appeared on the Belly of the Tiger podcast in 2021, Asian comedian Bobby Lee even pleaded guilty to using some unspecified slurs during live comedy shows. But this is when he refers to friends and comedians he knows from the shows in question, and they know it. Gillis wasn't exactly in that position with the statements that led to his firing, although one could argue there was. some Irony at play. Clearly it was not good spelling.
At the time, there were dozens of advertisers threatening to pull money from “SNL” if Shane Gillis wasn't fired, and when this kind of financial turmoil is in the air, someone has to be held accountable. Gillis is still coming out the other side as his career continues, and some might argue that it's best that he not do SNL. After all, he was finally invited back to host “SNL” for season 49, his monologue has been a huge hit, including a special on Netflix, and he's been using his impressive Donald Trump impersonation for years, one of the reasons why the ones he was hired for “SNL” initially before he was played by Alec Baldwin and James Austin Johnson. Actually, Gillis said Michaels wanted to hire him to play Trump in the 50th season, but he declined.
While I think you could argue that Shane Gillis' monologue has more bubbling beneath the surface than it might seem, especially to some of the audiences who embraced him after he was fired for all the wrong reasons, there's no denying . which would have been a distraction for “SNL” to do what it's supposed to do. It's hard to make a late-night comedy series when everyone is distracted by a controversial cast member, and while Lorne Michaels may not have liked the decision at the time, it's clear that “SNL” and Shane Gillis are better off without each other. the other.
