Courtesy of NBC.
Shane Gillis has built up one of the more remarkable comeback stories in comedy since getting quickly hired & fired in 2019 from Saturday Night Live for saying homophobic & racial slurs on a podcast.
Over the last five years, he's become one of the biggest names in comedy thanks to his thriving stand-up act, popular comedy podcast Matt & Shane's Secret Podcast with Matt McCusker, & his own sketch comedy project Gilly & Keeves with frequent collaborator John McKeever.
And in 2024 alone, he returned to SNL to make his hosting debut where he has since made his wrongs right with the acclaimed sketch series. He also premiered his Netflix comedy series Tires (with a second season on the way), has one of Netflix's top performing stand-up specials this year for Beautiful Dogs & now has a thriving brand partnership with Bud Light.
But now, SNL creator & executive producer Lorne Michaels has chimed in further about the tough decision to let go of (at the time, newcomer) Shane Gillis as one of the show's newest cast members in 2019 before its season premiere and now blames NBC for that decision.
What Lorne Michaels is really saying about Shane Gillis' firing from "SNL."
In a new series profile with The Wall Street Journal for the show's 50th season, Michaels addressed his soreness for having to let go of Gillis from the show & how that decision was beyond his control. “He said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world,” Michaels says. “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.”
He continued, while pointing to leadership at NBC for making the call, saying “That was very strong from the people in charge. And obviously I was not on that side, but I understood it.”
Adding on to this story, it also revealed at Skankfest this year by Luis J. Gomez that Gillis was reportedly invited by Michaels to come back to the show & reprise his role as former president Donald Trump throughout the show's election cycle (which coincided the show's 50th season premiere). He commented on this at the festival after responding to Gomez' announcement saying, "“They said, ‘Are you serious? You’re going to say no?’ I said, ‘Lorne, I gotta to go to Coke Magic.’”
We at least know now that Gillis indeed has a great relationship with the show still & could be invited back again later down the road to host and make another guest appearance.
