Bowen Yang Recalls Phone Call With Shane Gillis Before Gillis' 'SNL' Firing
Bowen Yang has shared tidbits from a phone exchange he said he had with Shane Gillis before the latter was fired from “Saturday Night Live.”
Yang and Gillis were both hired onto the comedy show’s cast in 2019. Yang, who had spent a year as a writer for the show, was its first Chinese American cast member and its third out gay man.
Shortly after the casting announcement, racist and homophobic comments that Gillis had made on a podcast in 2018 were circulated on social media. He had used anti-Chinese and homophobic slurs and repeatedly mocked people of Chinese descent.
Gillis issued a non-apology to “anyone who’s actually offended.” Days later, he was fired.
In a new profile in the New Yorker, Yang spoke about the aftermath of Gillis’ firing as he was still processing the enormity of his new gig. After receiving the “SNL” job offer, he said, he couldn’t sleep that night. The next day, he took an afternoon nap and woke up to urgent texts from his agent apologizing and asking if he had seen the Gillis news.
Yang said he texted Gillis, who called back and apologized for the chaos.
“I ended the call by saying, ‘I guess I’ll just see you at work,’” Yang said, per the New Yorker. “He laughed and said, ‘Sure,’ and hung up. Then they announced that he was fired.”
As Yang’s historic casting became part of the online discourse about the Gillis debacle, it made him feel “incidental to this big national story about cancel culture,” he said.
He noted that “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels had also called him to assure him, “I don’t need you to be the poster child for racial harmony.”
In February, Gillis ended up hosting “SNL” and joked about how he had been fired four years earlier. That monologue was criticized for reinforcing stereotypes about disabled people.