Shane Gillis

Gillis insisted that while the jokes they made in the clip were regrettable, especially when isolated without the context of the Joke? as a whole, the intent was misunderstood; the nuance was missed, because in the scenario they were joking about, he was quoting a hypothetical 1940s white landlord in Chinatown.

He was mocking racism, and No Malice or hate was intended.

In other clips, Gillis and co-host Matt McCusker ranked comedians by race, gender and sexual orientation, which included the use of gay slurs.

Later that night, Gillis posted a Tweet saying that "I'm a comedian who pushes boundaries" and that "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."

Four days later, a spokesperson for Lorne Michaels, a co-creator of the show, announced that Gillis had been removed from the cast.

Afterward, Gillis maintained that while the clips looked bad, they were taken out of context, and he was misquoted in the majority of articles reporting the story.

Gillis also stated that he immediately regretted using the "I'm a comedian who pushes boundaries" statement, blaming it on having "literally 5 minutes of being pressured to write anything", acknowledging the statement was "corny" and that he officially retracted the statement.

Shane Michael Gillis (born December 11, 1987) is an American stand-up comedian.

He is co-host, along with fellow stand-up comedian Matt McCusker, of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, the most subscribed-to podcast on Patreon.

Shane Michael Gillis was born on December 11, 1987, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, a town located just outside Harrisburg.

His parents are both of Irish Catholic heritage.

While attending Trinity High School in nearby Camp Hill, he was on its football team as an offensive tackle.

He graduated in 2006.

He went to West Point but quit shortly into his first year.

He subsequently attended and played a year of football at Elon University and eventually graduated from West Chester University.

After graduating, he spent six months teaching English in Spain.

Gillis began performing comedy in 2012.

He regularly performed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

To further his career, he relocated to Philadelphia.

In 2015, he placed third at Helium Comedy Club's annual "Philly's Phunniest" tournament, and he won the tournament the next year.

In 2016, Gillis began Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast with Matt McCusker.

In 2017, Gillis became a frequent guest on The Bonfire with Big Jay Oakerson and Dan Soder, increasing his popularity.

He also began a weekly show on Compound Media called A Fair One with Tommy Pope.

Later that day, however, several clips of a 2018 episode of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, which have since been removed from YouTube, resurfaced, in which Gillis and co-host Matt McCusker made jokes in mock East Asian accents while discussing Chinatown and used the word "chink", an ethnic slur for Chinese people.

In 2019, the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal named Gillis one of its "New Faces".

Gillis was announced as a new cast member on NBC's sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live in 2019, but he was fired five days later due to backlash over a 2018 podcast episode in which he used ethnic slurs.

In 2021, Gillis released his first comedy special, Shane Gillis: Live in Austin, on YouTube.

Gillis frequently collaborates with filmmaker John McKeever on the online sketch series Gilly & Keeves.

In September 2023, his second comedy special, Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs, was released on Netflix.

In 2019, Comedy Central named Gillis an "Up Next" comedian as he performed at Comedy Central's Clusterfest.

That same year, Gillis was recognized as a "New Face" at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.

During an interview for All Things Considered at that festival, Gillis was interrupted by stand-up comedian Robert Kelly, who said, "You're very funny, dude ... I mean, I wanted to hate it."

The interviewer, Andrew Limbong, described Gillis' set at the festival, writing: "Shane Gillis gives off post-jock energy—like someone who used to play a sport in school, then had the self-awareness to realize he wasn't cut out for it and stopped—but he isn't bitter about it at all. His friendly demeanor distracts you, while he sneaks in just a whiff of social insight within a barrage of self-deprecating sex jokes."

Gillis's addition to Saturday Night Live (SNL) as a featured cast member was announced on September 12, 2019, along with Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman.

In January 2020, Gillis was named "2019's Stand-Up Comedian of the Year" in Theinterrobang's Sixth Annual Comedy Awards.

In December 2020, Gillis and comedian John McKeever launched the web series Gilly and Keeves, featuring comedy sketches starring Gillis and McKeever such as "ISIS Toyota", "Uncle Daycare", and "Trump Speed Dating".

On September 7, 2021, Gillis released his first live comedy special, Shane Gillis: Live in Austin on YouTube.

Comedy website The Laugh Button ranked Gillis's special in second place in their top 20 comedy specials of 2021.

Since 2021, Gillis has made a series of appearances on Joe Rogan's podcast The Joe Rogan Experience alongside comics Mark Normand and Ari Shaffir, known as the "Protect Our Parks" episodes.

Gillis released his second live comedy special, Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs on September 5, 2023, on Netflix.