Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Shortly after comedian Shane Gillis was announced to the cast of Saturday Night Live, a journalist shared footage of him using homophobic and anti-Asian slurs, spurring many to take to Twitter to condemn his words, reports Variety.
On Thursday, reporter Seth Simons posted footage of a 2018 podcast in which Gillis can be heard saying, “Chinatown’s f*cking nuts,” and “Let the f*cking ch*nks live there.”
In another podcast in which Gillis participated, Bernie Sanders is referred to as a “commie Jew chink,” and Yang is also listed as a “chink.”
In response to a weak public apology from Gillis, Andrew Yang took to Twitter:
For the record, I do not think he should lose his job. We would benefit from being more forgiving rather than punitive. We are all human.
— Andrew Yang??? (@AndrewYang) September 14, 2019
Roger Lau, Elizabeth Warren’s campaign manager, praised Yang for his response:
Many others, including stars Jimmy O. Yang and Simu Liu, also took to Twitter to respond to Gillis’s remarks.
In a 2016 interview with Billy Penn, Gillis talked about what topics he considered in or out of bounds. “You throw stuff out there and you get to see them react to things, like yea or nay, what’s funny and what’s not,” Gillis is quoted to state. “You can be racist to Asians. That’s what we’re finding out.”
Variety reported that Gillis can be heard making “derogatory remarks about women, Muslims and the LBTQ community” in some of his podcast episodes as well.
For example, Vulture reported that Gillis and podcast cohost Matt McCusker called comedians Judd Apatow and Chris Gethard “white f*ggot comics” and “f*cking gayer than ISIS.”
In addition to Gillis, SNL also just added to its cast Bowen Yang, a gay Chinese American comedian. According to Variety, SNL showrunner Lorne Michaels has not yet commented on Gillis’s controversial remarks.
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RE: Andrew yang and others respond to new SNL cast member use of slurs: #LorneMichaels show leadership and fire this guy from SNL