Bowen Yang is pulling back the curtain on comedian Shane Gillis’ hiring and subsequent firing from Saturday Night Live in 2019.
Yang spoke about the situation in a profile in The New Yorker published Monday, recalling that Gillis phoned him after his old homophobic and racist jokes, made on a previous podcast, went viral following SNL’s announcement that he would be joining the cast for the sketch comedy show’s 45th season.
Yang was also a member of that year’s class, making him the program’s first Chinese-American cast member.
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According to Yang, he learned of the Gillis scandal through texts from his agent, who apologized in advance for the ordeal.
Later, he reached out to Gillis personally, who called him to apologize.
“I ended the call by saying, ‘I guess I’ll just see you at work,’” Yang told the magazine. “He laughed and said, ‘Sure,’ and hung up. Then they announced that he was fired.”
Yang adds that his boss and SNL creator Lorne Michaels assured him that he wouldn’t have to be the “poster child for racial harmony.”
The actor remarked that the situation gave him the sense that he was “incidental to this big national story about cancel culture.”
Ironically, Gillis would return to the show in 2024 as a host.
“I was fired from this show a while ago, but don’t look that up, please,” Gillis said during his opening monologue.
Prior to this conversation, Yang spoke with fellow SNL cast member Kenan Thompson in Variety about Gillis still being a topic of conversation.
“I think he and I have done enough things in our careers now to really not [have] that be the definitive beginning or the thing that casts a pall over everything else that we do going forward,” Yang told Thompson regarding the scandal.
