Actor and comedian Rob Schneider has come forward to defend 31-year-old comedian Shane Gillis, who was fired from Saturday Night Live (SNL) on 16 September before making his debut performance. 

The decision was made after the resurfaced video showing him making racist and homophobic jokes became controversial. Schneider took to Twitter to support Gillis.

On September 12, SNL announced their new cast members Bowen Yang, Chloe Fineman, and Shane Gillis for season 45 of SNL after actress and comedian Leslie Jones departed from the show. Yang is the first Chinese-American and third openly gay person to be cast in SNL.

But just hours later freelance comedy reporter Seth Simons posted clips from Matt McCusker and Gillis’ 2018 Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast. The videos showed  Gillis making racist and mocking remarks about Chinese people and even ranked comedians by race, gender, and sexual orientation and using homophobic slurs. 

In the wake of the controversy, Gillis also posted “apology” Tweets.

On September 16 NBC spokesperson released a statement,

“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. 

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.” 

Short Bio

Shane Gillis’ birth took place on 12 December 1988 in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania United States. He was educated at Trinity High School, where he played football as an offensive tackle...Full Bio