Posted in: NBC, Peacock, TV | Tagged: saturday night live, snl

SNL 50: Lorne Michaels "Angry" at Shane Gillis Firing, Blames NBC

SNL EP Lorne Michaels discusses being "angry" about Shane Gillis being fired and how the decision to part ways with Gillis came from NBC.

Thanks to the long-running late-night sketch comedy/music series being selected as this year's WSJ. Magazine Innovators Issue comedy cover star, NBC's Saturday Night Live EP is finally pointing fingers at who was responsible for actor/comedian Shane Gillis being fired from SNL – and they weren't pointed at Michaels. To understand the controversy surrounding Gillis, you need to go back to 2019. That's when Gillis was officially announced as joining the SNL cast – only for the long-running sketch comedy/music series to part ways with Gillis only days after recordings of racist, sexist, and homophobic comments surfaced as part of a YouTube channel called Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast.

"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL. 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 a comedian and his impressive audition for SNL," shared a spokesperson for Michaels regarding the decision at the time. "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."

Five years later, Michaels would welcome Gillis back to host the February 24th episode of Season 49, with Michaels sharing his thoughts in September on what he calls an "overreaction" to Gillis' previous comments and what he learned from the actor/comedian's return to SNL earlier this year. "We had a bad time when I added Shane Gillis to the cast [in 2019]. He got beat up for things that he'd done years earlier [racist and homophobic jokes], and the overreaction to it was so stunning — and the velocity of it was 200 Asian companies were going to boycott the show. It became a scandal, and I go, 'No, no, he's just starting, and he's really funny, and you don't know how we're going to use him,'" Michaels said during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

He continued, "And when he came back to the show last year [to host], we saw, 'Oh right, he's really talented, and he would've been really good for us.' Now, his life turned out well without SNL, but my point with it is everything became way too serious. It was like a mania. And the velocity of cancellation — and lots of people deserved to not be liked — it just became not quite the Reign of Terror, but it was like you're judging everybody on every position they have on every issue as opposed to, 'Are they any good at the thing they do?' I do think that period is winding down, and I believe the people who do awful things will still be punished."

A little more than a month later – and after four episodes of SNL's milestone 50th season – Michaels revisited the topic for the profile piece in WSJ. Magazine. "He said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world. I was angry. I thought you haven't seen what we're going to do and what I'm going to try to bring out in him because I thought he was the real thing." Michaels shared. In terms of parting ways with Gillis, Michaels notes that it was NBC's call and not his. "That [the call to fire Gillis] was very strong from the people in charge. And obviously, I was not on that side, but I understood it," Michaels added, noting that he kept in contact with Gillis after the firing and that his being against the actor/comedian being fired was a factor in bringing Gillis back to host.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!