Comedian Shane Gillis was fired as a featured player on Saturday Night Live before he ever got to be in a single sketch. Now, he’s set to be the next host of the iconic sketch show.
Fresh off a big sponsorship deal with Bud Light—part of the beer company’s attempt to woo back the anti-woke crowd after the massive backlash to a single social post from trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney—Gillis was just announced as host of the Feb. 24 episode with musical guest 21 Savage.
In the fall of 2019, Gillis was hired and then quickly un-hired by SNL after clips of his podcast, in which he could be heard using racial slurs targeted at Asian people, started to circulate on social media. The jokes stung even more given the fact that Gillis was hired at the same time as Bowen Yang, who became the first East Asian cast member in the show’s history.
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“I’m a comedian who was funny enough to get SNL. That can’t be taken away,” Gillis said in a statement after the decision came down.
Five years later, after a hit Netflix stand-up special that has made him one of the most popular comics in the country, he will finally appear on the show in a much bigger way.
