Lorne Michaels Calls Shane Gillis SNL Casting Backlash an ‘Overreaction’

Lorne Michaels has no regrets about hiring controversial comedian Shane Gillis — or bringing him back to host Saturday Night Live after he was fired for resurfaced racist and homophobic jokes.

“We had a bad time when I added Shane Gillis to the cast [in 2019],” Michaels, 79, recalled during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, which was published on Thursday, September 19. “He got beat up for things that he’d done years earlier.”

The creator of SNL didn’t understand the backlash, adding, “The overreaction to it was so stunning —and the velocity of it was 200 Asian companies were going to boycott the show.”

Michaels defended his decision to bring Gillis, 36, back as a host earlier this year.

“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,’” he added. “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.’”

While reflecting on the drama, Michaels suggested that cancel culture played a large role. “His life turned out well without SNL, but my point with it is everything became way too serious,” he continued. “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?’”

Michaels concluded: “I do think that period is winding down and, I believe, the people who do awful things will still be punished.”

Gillis was hired as a featured player on SNL in 2019 but was fired four days later after racist and homophobic comments from his “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” resurfaced online.

“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 comedian and his impressive audition for SNL,” the show said in a statement 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.”

Gillis addressed the controversy before he was fired, writing via social media, “I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries. I sometimes miss. If you go through my 10 years of comedy, most of it bad, you’re going to find a lot of bad misses. I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said. My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks.”

After being cut from SNL, Gillis released another statement.

“I’m a comedian who was funny enough to get SNL,” he wrote at the time. “That can’t be taken away. Of course I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL, but I understand it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made. I’m honestly grateful for the opportunity. I was always a [Mad TV] guy anyway.”

Gillis was ultimately brought back in February, where he joked about the drama in his opening monologue. “I was fired from this show a while ago,” he said. “Don’t look that up, please. Please don’t Google that. It’s fine. Don’t even worry about it. I probably shouldn’t be up here honestly. I should be at home. I should be a high school football coach.”