SNL Cast Members Finally Speak Out Over Shane Gillis Controversy

Now that Shane Gillis has officially been canned by Saturday Night Live, some of his would-be co-stars have broken silence on the situation that’s dominated the news cycle for the better part of the week. Featured player Chris Redd kicked things offer Monday night by jokingly asking his followers on Twitter if they had anything interesting going on at their jobs. “So…what’s going on at y’all jobs? Anything crazy?” the comedian tweeted.

Before long, fellow SNL featured player Ego Nwodim responded to Redd’s tweet with a simple “Lolllll” while the show’s newest addition in Bowen Yang followed it up with a hearty “Hahahahahahahaha.” On Instagram, Saturday Night Live stalwart and Weekend Update anchor Michael Che offered his take on the ordeal, apparently slamming the people ranting about the show even though they don’t tune in while the show’s airing live.

The controversy stems from a resurfaced clip in which Gillis went on a rant about New York’s Chinatown. He called the local “f—ing nuts” before dropping a derogatory term for Asian-Americans, also including bits like “the translation between you and the waiter is just such a f—ing hassle,” and “nice racism, good racism. I love to be f—ing racist.”

“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining ‘SNL,’” the show said in a statement announcing they had moved on from the comedian. “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.”

Yang and Chloe Fineman will join the cast as featured players in the 45th season of Saturday Night Live. It’s unclear if the production will add another third character or just moved ahead with Yang and Fineman. Ghostbusters alum Leslie Jones announced earlier this summer she’d be leaving the show after five seasons.

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