HomeAsian Americans'SNL' fires comedian who used anti-Asian, homophobic slurs
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‘SNL’ fires comedian who used anti-Asian, homophobic slurs

Four days after his past racist and homophobic comments resurfaced, Shane Gillis has been fired from Saturday Night Live, HuffPost reports.

“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,” a spokesperson for SNL said in a statement to HuffPost. “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.”

After NBC announced the new hire, clips circulated from Gillis’s podcasts and other media where he used anti-Asian slurs and made fun of Asian accents, in addition to using homophobic and misogynistic language, reports Variety.

Gillis was named as a new cast member alongside Bowen Yang, a juxtaposition many found galling. Yang is gay and will be the first Chinese American cast member on a show that has been criticized for lack of diversity among cast members and hosts.

An NBC spokesperson said the decision to fire Gillis was discussed with the the comedian, who previously said he would be happy to apologize to “anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.”

Gillis wrote in a statement on Twitter on Monay that the fact that he was funny enough to be cast “can’t be taken away,” although he understands that his casting “would be too much of a distraction.”

The 45th season of SNL will begin airing on September 28.

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