The Shady Side Of Shane Gillis
Before Shane Gillis experienced his big career-defining moment, he experimented with a shady way for comedians to roast each other's material in real time. The concept: while one comedian was doing a set, others anonymously texted their own jokes about the person on the stage, and they were displayed on a screen. The show, which was called Digital Graffiti, took place at the Plays & Players Theatre in Philadelphia in 2016. It was the brainchild of Gillis and his "Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast" co-host Matt McCusker. When some comedians bravely subjected themselves to the experiment, they were surprised by what their fellow comics wrote.
One Black comedian told Billy Penn at WHYY that he didn't expect so many texts about him to be focused on his race. Gillis made his own observation about the racist humor that his peers resorted to when afforded the safety of anonymity. "You can be racist to Asians. That's what we're finding out," he said. Now, that's funny.
Speaking to Lancaster Online, Gillis admitted that he loved creating an environment where internet trolls would feel right at home. "It's one of my favorite shows," he said. "It's just a little aggressive. It gets pretty mean, pretty quick." He also spoke to the publication about his podcast. "It can be pretty offensive ... if you get offended. When people ask me if I have a podcast, sometimes I say no." If this were true, maybe he'd be a player on "Saturday Night Live" right now.
His casual use of offensive slurs cost him SNL
It only took a matter of hours for Shane Gillis' behavior on his podcast to kill his "Saturday Night Live" career. The same day he was announced as a new cast member alongside Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman, journalist Seth Simons tweeted some incriminating clips from "Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast." In them, Gillis adopted a racist Chinese accent and used anti-Asian slurs while complaining about Chinatown. "Let the f**king c***ks live there," he said at one point, per Variety. In other clips, Gillis made racist jokes about Muslims and casually used a gay slur. "Lost" actor Daniel Dae Kim was among those who voiced their displeasure with one of television's longest-running institutions hiring Gillis. In a since-deleted tweet, Kim referenced Yang's historical addition to the "SNL" cast. "It took 45 years for @SNL to get an East Asian cast member and in that same year he'll be joined by someone who would have no problem calling him a "f**kin' c***k. Gotta be a joke in there somewhere."
However, Lorne Michaels wasn't laughing. He reacted to the internet belatedly doing his vetting for him by firing Gillis from "SNL." Unfortunately, this wasn't before Gillis dug himself a deeper hole with a defiant "apology." He defended himself via a since-deleted tweet, explaining that he's a "comedian who pushes boundaries." Portraying himself as being on the cutting edge of comedy because he used racist and homophobic language was not the best look.
He used an ableist slur on SNL
In 2024, Lorne Michaels decided to stir the pot by inviting Shane Gillis to grace the "Saturday Night Live" stage, an intriguing move considering Michaels previously showed Gillis the door for language that raised more than a few eyebrows. Fast forward, and Gillis lands on the SNL stage with a wink and a nod, musing, "I probably shouldn't be up here, honestly." Talk about a full-circle moment.
Gillis gave his loudest cheerleaders a reason to celebrate when he used the r-word during his opening monologue. He got away with it by putting it in the mouth of an imagined bully speaking to his niece, who has Down syndrome. But some of his fans absolutely lost their minds because they thought he was making the use of the slur as an insult great again. One X user wrote, "The fact that Shane Gillis said 'gay' and 'r***rded' during his monologue means the nation is healing." Another reacted to Gillis' use of the r-word with a GIF of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn popping champagne. Gillis must be well-aware that he draws in an audience that seems to relish his edgy humor, context be damned.
Did he shade a certain subset of comedians?
There's a group of comedians who are profiting big by railing against cancel culture. Ironically, they're often doing so while filming Netflix specials or performing at sold-out arena shows. Self-proclaimed TERF Dave Chappelle is an example of a comic who has learned that he can say something offensive to make people complain about it and then complain about attempts to "cancel" him. But Shane Gillis isn't interested in joining the cancel culture discourse during his stand-up sets. "I don't want to be a victim — I want to be a comedian," he said in a 2021 appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast. "I don't want to come on and do stuff where I'm, like, 'Yeah, it was unfair how I was treated.'"
Gillis also said that he accepted the consequences of the "SNL" debacle — and that losing that primo gig didn't inspire him to change his behavior. "I said wild s**t. I'm going to keep saying wild s**t," he vowed. While Gillis' unapologetic approach to his comedy has placed him in the group that appeals to the cancel culture decriers, he seemed to throw a little shade at the comics who are starting to shape their entire personalities around their crusade against consequences for saying whatever they want to. "I don't want to be on the other side of it where it's like, 'I'm a free speech guy' ... I just want to do comedy," he told Joe Rogan.
He apologized to Chris Gethard after calling him an anti-gay slur
During the infamous podcast episodes that lost Shane Gillis his "Saturday Night Live" gig, he didn't just fling out offensive slurs while talking about groups of people. He also singled out filmmaker Judd Apatow and comedian Chris Gethard, whom he deemed "white f***got comics" who are "f***ing gayer than ISIS." According to the Daily Beast, this is how Gillis chose to criticize the two men's comedy styles. After the "SNL" scandal broke, Gillis personally apologized to Gethard, who told The New York Times, "He definitely let me know that he felt he had crossed some lines."
When he appeared on "The Jim and Sam Show" in 2020, Gethard said that Gillis referring to him with a homophobic slur didn't bother him as much as the hurtful things Gillis said about his HBO comedy special, "Career Suicide." It especially bothered him when Gillis started mocking his material about his suicide attempt. "I wasn't thrilled," he stated. According to Gethard's recollection, Gillis ended his random, 10-minute roast by saying, "If you like comedy, how could you ever support Chris Gethard?"
Gethard said that he and Gillis were being managed by the same company at the time, implying that this may be the only reason he received an apology from the other comic. On top of all of this, it was hard for Gethard to see so many of his colleagues rallying around Gillis when only a few comedians reached out to him.
Shane Gillis angered Australians
Shane Gillis made a joke about the land down under that didn't go over so well with some Australians. In his Netflix special "Beautiful Dogs," he says, "It's just a whole country doing nothing. That's what I like about them. They're just down there — zero exports, creating nothing." He clearly hasn't listened to Men at Work extolling the continent as the "land of plenty": flowing beer, Vegemite, and chundering men. According to Gillis, the only thing Oz ever gave him was a viral video of a kangaroo getting punched by a man. And yes, Gillis has made tour stops in Australia, so he's more than happy to take the money of the citizens that he pretty much deemed worthless. On the Netflix Is a Joke Instagram account, one Aussie commenter tried to educate the comedian by writing, "We actually produce a lot of the world's fresh fruits and vegetables."
Gillis also said that he considers America a better place than Australia (although it did rank No. 2 on his list). This really ticked off some Aussies, who argued that their country offers free medical care and safety for its schoolchildren. "Would rather [be] doing nothing and exporting nothing than having to buy my kid a Kevlar backpack to go to school," read one comment. But one the most scathing critiques was aimed at Gillis himself: "This isn't comedy, it's why everyone outside America thinks Americans are stupid."