"Saturday Night Live" Adds Three New Featured Players
by Nellie Andreeva
September 12, 2019


Meet "Saturday Night Live’s" new cast additions for its upcoming 45th season. Chloe Fineman, Shane Gillis and Bowen Yang have been tapped as new featured players on NBC’s venerable late-night sketch comedy program.

Yang joined SNL as a staff writer last season and is co-host of the Las Culturistas podcast. The promotion of Yang, son of Chinese immigrants, marks a milestone for representation on the program where he will be the first full-time East Asian cast member.

(SNL alum Fred Armisen is a quarter Japanese and Rob Schneider is a quarter Filipino)




Fineman was a New Face at the 2018 Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal and has been a regular performer at the Groundlings.

Gillis was recently recognized as a New Face at the 2019 Just for Laughs Festival.

https://deadline.com/2019/09/saturday-night-live-adds-three-to-cast-for-season-45-chloe-fineman-shane-gillis-and-bowen-yang-first-full-time-asian-cast-member-1202732719/

SNL Fires Shane Gillis After Racist, Homophobic Comments Resurface
by Andy Swift
September 16, 2019


Live from New York, it… won’t be Shane Gillis. The comedian, one of three new cast members recently announced for "Saturday Night Live‘s" upcoming 45th season, has been fired over a series of racist and homophobic comments that resurfaced online.

“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” says a show spokesperson on behalf of SNL boss Lorne Michaels. “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.”

https://tvline.com/2019/09/16/shane-gillis-fired-snl-cast-member-racist-homophobic-comments/

wow no kidding!!!

SNL Fires Shane Gillis After Racist, Homophobic Comments Resurface
by Andy Swift
September 16, 2019


Live from New York, it… won’t be Shane Gillis. The comedian, one of three new cast members recently announced for "Saturday Night Live‘s" upcoming 45th season, has been fired over a series of racist and homophobic comments that resurfaced online.

“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” says a show spokesperson on behalf of SNL boss Lorne Michaels. “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.”

https://tvline.com/2019/09/16/shane-gillis-fired-snl-cast-member-racist-homophobic-comments/

SNL should know an attention-seeking bigot when they see one (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2019-09-13/snl-shane-gillis-racist-backlash): "And there’s no way they didn’t see this coming," says Lorraine Ali, who expects better of SNL since it's been promoting a liberal viewpoint for years. "The once-edgy sketch comedy series has a history of lampooning those who deal in hateful rhetoric — exactly like the frequent slurs made by the guy they just hired."
Gillis' hackish laziness is beneath SNL, not to mention a below-average amateur night (https://www.thewrap.com/shane-gillis-racist-comedy-saturday-night-live/): "That non-apology is not good enough," says Lawrence Yee. "It lacks remorse. It lacks an understanding of what he said was wrong. By saying he is 'happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended,' Gillis it suggests anyone who is actually offended doesn’t understand his comedy. Well Shane, I understand your comedy just fine. It’s ignorant. And one more thing: It’s also uninformed."

New SNL cast member Shane Gillis' racist material isn't pushing boundaries -- it's hackneyed comedy (https://variety.com/2019/tv/columns/shane-gillis-snl-racist-jokes-politically-incorrect-comedy-boring-1203335026/)

Gillis defended himself as "a comedian who pushes boundaries" (https://www.primetimer.com/item/New-SNL-star-Shane-Gillis-responds-to-racism-controversy-by-offering-to-apologize-quot-to-anyone-whos-actually-offended-quot-z8SzQ2) and "sometimes that requires risks" in his Twitter statement last night in response to the backlash over his past racist and homophobic jokes. "This is all hard to believe, and not for the reason Gillis and his vitriolic supporters crying 'PC police!' might think," says Caroline Framke. "The thing about this supposedly 'edgy' comedy like Gillis’ is that it’s rarely edgy or boundary-pushing at all, but the exact opposite. In the grand scheme of comedy, 'LOL minorities' is truly as basic as it gets. As long as there have been comedians, there have been comedians who rely on hackneyed stereotypes to get kneejerk laughs. Minstrel shows didn’t become one of America’s most time-honored forms of entertainment out of nowhere; white people crafting offensive punchlines that depend on slurs is one of comedy’s most basic traditions. There have always been comedians who built a fanbase by catering to their fans’ basest instincts. There have always been routines based on lazy clichés about marginalized people. There have always been racist punchlines that reach for the lowest common denominator, that playact biases under the guise of just 'telling it like it is.' Spitting stereotypes into a mic like Gillis does isn’t just vile, it’s boring. Claiming otherwise is maybe the best joke he’s told yet. And yet, Gillis’ fans and some other comedians are holding him up as some paragon of truth, as a guy who will say what they’re all thinking and get punished for it. This, too, is a boring line that we’ve heard a million times before."

ALSO:

Gillis' past comments shows how little respect he has for diverse voices (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/09/saturday-night-live-cant-ignore-its-shane-gillis-problem/598033/): "Backbiting in the comedy scene isn’t a rare phenomenon, but Gillis’s grousing underlines just how little respect he has for any diversity of voices in a medium whose purported values he’s invoking to defend himself," says David Sims. "His tweeted statement suggests anything terrible he might have said was all to help develop his craft, and yet his conception of that craft is frustratingly narrow. Decades after its debut, Saturday Night Live remains a career pinnacle that so many comedy professionals aspire to; the question now is whether Michaels and NBC will reflect on what it would mean for working and aspiring comics if the show included Gillis in the cast."
Focusing on Gillis' past is fair game (https://www.gq.com/story/saturday-night-live-shane-gilliss-racist-material): "Now, appointing yourself as a 'comedian' and calling the things you say 'jokes' does not erase accountability, nor does people finding them and pointing them out constitute an attempt at 'canceling' or ruining someone's life," says Tom Philip. "Raising real, cultural concern about an already-popular performer being given a national (and still seminal) platform is valid. No matter what becomes of Gillis's relationship with SNL, he will remain in profitable work with a significant fanbase. Considering all the above, it's obviously just better he doesn't get to do it on a broadcast network."
Patton Oswalt mocks Gillis' statement: "strap in ‘cuz my comedy is SUPER EDGY" (https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/status/1172564245273333760)

NBC Boss on the Hiring & Firing of Comedian Shane Gillis
by Nellie Andreeva
January 11, 2020


Just days after Shane Gillis was announced as one of three new cast members on SNL, the NBC sketch show fired the stand-up comic after past racial slur use by him was discovered.

The controversial footage had been widely available online in podcast videos. At the time, NBC apologized for any deficiencies in their vetting system that allowed for Gillis to be hired in the first place.




At TCA today, NBC Chairman Paul Telegdy was asked about the debacle.

“I think what happened next (after reporters googled Gillis’ name and discovered the video), serves as a learning moment for a lot of people,” he said. “How quickly Lorne (Michaels) acted and subsequently what happened is a testament to how we act as a company.”




He addressed measures NBC is taking to prevent future incidents with proper vetting. “We are always looking to do better,” he said.

Telegdy talked about the “enormously fine line and gray area” between comedians’ right to free speech and “what we should hold them accountable for.”

“We acted fast, Lorne did the right thing, going forward we think we will rightly be accountable,” Telegdy said.

https://deadline.com/2020/01/nbc-hiring-firing-saturday-night-live-comedian-shane-gillis-controversy-racial-slur-1202827656/