‘SNL’ Welcomes Back Fired Cast Member Who Bombed Hosting Gig

Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels is bringing back fired cast member Shane Gillis once again to host the show when it returns in March—after the conservative-leaning comedian bombed during his first hosting gig one year earlier.

Michaels hired Gillis as a featured player in 2019, before firing him days later after clips from his podcast emerged in which he’d used racist slurs against Asians. According to a new profile of Michaels in Vulture, the SNL boss only fired Gillis amid pressure from NBC, which was catching heat from an Asian advocacy group.

“Lorne was railroaded into it,” an unnamed NBC executive said of the situation. The site also reported that Michaels had “always wanted” someone like Gillis on the cast—a “red-state” comedian well-liked by conservative audiences.

More about Michaels’ desire to keep the show from leaning too far left emerged in the new biography Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, where he’s quoted as saying, “It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan.” His efforts to get Gillis on the show as a cast member, and then later as a host, played right into that strategy.

So it stands to reason that Michaels stayed in touch with Gillis after the scandal and invited him back to host five years later in 2024. But that appearance was plagued with problems. Even before Gillis said a word on the SNL stage, the invite alone was enough to draw the ire of Gillis’ critics, who pointed out ahead he’d also used his podcast to host Holocaust deniers and 9/11 truthers.

Instead of effectively shutting down naysayers, the comedian’s opening monologue alienated viewers with offensive jokes about gay people and Down Syndrome. Gillis repeatedly commented on the lack of laughter from the live audience, saying at one point, “I thought it was great, never mind.”

A Vulture review called the monologue “cringey,” and The Hollywood Reporter noted that Gillis “struggled throughout his monologue and was visibly anxious as he pivoted to new topics.”

Gillis had more success in a taped sketch that featured his Donald Trump impression, which helps explain why Michaels supposedly asked Gillis back to the show to play Trump for the remainder of the 2024 campaign season.

Podcast host Luis J. Gomez broke that news at the Skankfest comedy festival in Las Vegas last year, as he was introducing the comedian before he took the stage. “Nobody thought he was coming to this festival this year,” Gomez can be heard saying in a clip from the festival that was uploaded on X, “Because he was offered to play Trump on the entire season of SNL and he turned it down to f---ing be here, folks!”

Michaels inviting Gillis back to 30 Rock yet again proves he’s determined to keep giving the comedian a shot until the SNL audience finally laughs with him—unlike when Gillis used the word “retarded” in a joke in his monologue last year, which caused a wave of silence to hush across Studio 8H. “Look, I don’t have any material that can be on TV, all right?” he told the crowd.