Posted in: NBC, TV | Tagged: bleeding cool, cable, saturday night live, Shane Gillis, snl, streaming, television, tv

"Saturday Night Live" Cast Member Shane Gillis Responds to Accusations of Racism, Sexism, Homophobia

The cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live had been known for years as the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players," but one of the recently-announced new cast members may not be suitable for NBC's airwaves at any time of the day. Only hours after the long-running sketch-comedy series revealed the additions of Shane Gillis, Chloe Fineman, and Bowen Yang for its 45th season, Gillis is having to answer for racist, sexist, and homophobic comments made in videos that were part of a YouTube channel called Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast – on the same day NBC and SNL celebrated the show's first full-time cast member of East Asian descent.

In one of the segments from a more extensive September 2018 YouTube post (which was removed), Gillis says to co-host/comedian Matt McCusker, "Chinatown's f***ing nuts. Let the f***ing ch**ks live there." Later in that same video post, Gillis has this to say about his experiences at Chinese restaurants: "The translation between you and the waiter is such a f—ing hassle, I'm pointing at it." Gillis then appears to attempt to differentiate their discussion by calling it "nice racism, good racism."

Freelance writer, editor, and comedy journalist Seth Simons posted the clips via Twitter on Thursday evening, and you can see those below:

Later in the evening on Thursday, actor, comedian and writer Chris Gethard took to Twitter to address homophobic comments that were levelled against both him and writer/director Judd Apatow – with the the duo's talk then turning back towards racist comments and adding misogynistic comments into the mix.

https://twitter.com/ChrisGethard/status/1172326816582795264?s=20

https://twitter.com/ChrisGethard/status/1172327439579533312?s=20

https://twitter.com/ChrisGethard/status/1172328449685372929?s=20

https://twitter.com/ChrisGethard/status/1172331366706376704?s=20

Just before going to post, Gillis responded to the controversy, offering to apologize to anyone "who's actually offended by anything" and stating that to be "the best comedian" he can be, that he must be someone who "pushes boundaries" and "takes risks":

https://twitter.com/Shanemgillis/status/1172340437752807424?s=20

Variety

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