Fired ‘SNL’ Comedian Returning to Host

Shane Gillis has been slated as the host of Saturday Night Live later in February. According to Variety, SNL announced Gillis will be the host of the Feb. 24 episode with musical guest 21 Savage.

This hosting choice is sure to raise some interest, and probably some outrage, due to Gillis’ past with the show. In 2019, he was set to join the show as one of its newest cast members, but the quickly reversed its decision after clips and videos from his own podcast and other appearances went viral for “racist, homophobic, Islamaphobic and misogynistic jokes,” according to Variety.

“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining ‘SNL,’” the show said at the time through a spokesperson. “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 is far from the only comedian to face this kind of scrutiny when joining the series. Melissa Villasenor faced some backlash when she was hired for SNL due to past offensive tweets.

Since his firing, Gillis released a statement followed by another statement on the previous statement. Then the outrage online cooled off, allowing Gillis to thrive in the standup scene. His first stand-up special dropped on YouTube in the wake of the SNL controversy, while his second was released on Netflix in September.

Shortly before the SNL announcement, Gillis was already celebrating a pretty big week. Gillis and Bud Light announced a sponsorship partnership. Not a bad turnaround after making racist jokes.