Shane Gillies performs in New York, 2023. Photo: Getty
On February 24, the sketch show Saturday Night Live will open in the United States a hurried political sketch, the actors will turn to the camera and shout «Live from New York, it's Saturday night» and stand-up comedian Shane Gillies will take the stage to deliver the show's opening monologue.
SNL's opening monologue is a very specific US institution. It's hard to think of an equivalent venue anywhere in entertainment history where the likes of Adam Driver, Steve Martin, Timothée Chalamet, Will Ferrell, Ana de Armas, Lily Tomlin, Jim Carrey, Tina Fey, Taylor Swift, Tom Hanks, Eddie . Murphy and Elon Musk gave a 10-minute performance in front of five million viewers.
So Shane Gillies is not unique — even in that he was previously fired from the cast of SNL. Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Robert Downey Jr. and Sarah Silverman opened the show after unceremoniously leaving early in their careers. But Gillies is unusual in that before he even opens his mouth, he unleashes a raging debate about the culture wars—either showing that SNL is succumbing to the rising tide of right-wing comedy or showing how cowardly stand-ups would be if given the chance. or simply that the show's longtime creator and producer Lorne Michaels is an expert at boosting ratings.
Gillis—then an aspiring stand-up from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania—joined the SNL cast in 2019. He told Joe Rogan that he hated SNL at the time and thought he would never fit in. But his audition went well, and Michaels told him, “I'm going to use you, but I don't know how.”
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“They're looking at your social media and I told them I have a podcast where I say things like gay and retarded,” he told Rogan. “They said it was normal. Then, three hours after they announced they hired me, an article came out with clips of me saying some nasty things. And it didn't stop. There were so many articles — I was gutted on Twitter for three days. I walked into Lorne's office. He said: If we can get you on the first episode, people will see that you're not a piece of crap. But I knew that I would be fired, because there were so many worse things around.”
And he was duly fired — the damning quote was on Gillies' podcast with co-host Matt McCusker where they spoke. about how much they hated Chinese food and Philadelphia's Chinatown. “There’s a hell of a lot of Chinese out there,” Gillis said. “Let the damn Chinks live there.”
He might have survived even that if one of the other two actors hired with him hadn't been Bowen Yang, the show's first Asian-American actor. SNL has a long history of white performers playing Asians, including Mike Myers and John Belushi. Ian's hiring was announced as a response to this story. So it's tempting to say that it was the word «Chink» that influenced Gillies, although diving deep into episodes of his early podcasts does make for uncomfortable listening. Most of the quotes are too profanity-laced to print here, especially some of the racing stuff, but Gillies plays a game «like most racists do: guess the race of the car in front of you.»< /p>
SNL hires Shane Gillis, then fires him before his first show, calls him a racist and tries to cancel him, and then… five years later he hosts SNL as Guest. Absolutely hilarious.
— Anton Seim 🔑 (@antonseim) February 5, 2024
He explains that watching Asian porn turns him off because of the graphic descriptions of Asian bodies, making fun of Pakistani-born comedians with a 1970s Jim Davidson accent years and entertains—though disagrees with—guests who support the Unabomber and who believe Sandy Hook was a government plot.
In the feverish culture war that has raged in America for the past two decades, comedy has been exclusively liberal territory. In 2007, Fox News, under the auspices of 24 co-creator Joel Surnow, created the ½ Hour News program as a right-wing answer to The Daily Show. It featured skits poking fun at sexual harassment and global warming, but the jokes were clunky and poorly executed, making it almost feel like an SNL parody of a right-wing comedy.
In 2004, I interviewed a group of conservative Christian comics in the United States, including Christian stand-up Brad Stein. He was insightful, thoughtful, and, he told me, wrestled with the material while Bush was president. The comedy, Stine thought, needed to be stepped up. “The court jester had the right to mock the king, and this is the best comedy,” he explained. “I try to attack the liberal elite, but it doesn’t really appeal to the small-town crowd, and the inner-city comedy clubs don’t want to hear it.” He's mostly focused on acting since 2012, but looking at what happened to Gillies, I can't help but feel like if only Stine had stuck it out a couple more years.
In 2017, two famous comics — Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. — suffered in the eyes of some fans. Chappelle performed 20 minutes of transgender-targeted material in a series of stand-up shows, and Louis CK was outed during the MeToo movement for exposing himself to female comedians. Both continued to perform in front of huge crowds and adopted Gillies after his fall, performing with him as well as creating a podcast (Louis C.K.) and online sketches with him (Dave Chappelle). Suddenly there were right-wing comics in America that were actually funny… and Gillies cashed in on his «anti-woke» reputation.
Or rather, he kind of did it. Gillies, who is now selling out arenas across the US, defies easy labeling. He defends transgender people, supports gay pride and gleefully ridicules Donald Trump. His dismissal attracted an audience he didn't like—when he told them he didn't vote for Trump, they booed. The audience screamed “Chiiiink” and he cursed at them from the stage. Fans asked him to make selfie videos with homophobic slurs, but he always refused.
He opens his first stand-up with a story about his Fox News father, who “watches Fox every night until he can’t. That's how much they watch. They watch every night until they get so angry that they have to go to bed. My dad will watch for two hours and then out of nowhere he’ll just stand up and say, “Mr. Trance Potato Head, I'm going to bed. This world is going to hell.»
He ends by mocking the desegregation of football in Alabama and concludes, “If you want rights in America, you just have to put together a good football team. Like, if trans people got together and created just one hell of a tough ball, if the trans community could somehow upset Alabama, tomorrow everyone there would be like, 'Those are some badass bitches..'» In his latest special. Netflix's very funny «Beautiful Dogs,» he talks about his love of history and declares it a sign of «early Republicanism… If you're a white dude in your 20s or 30s who can't stop reading about World War II, it's coming, brother «.
Annie Marie Dougherty, Shane Gillies, Caroline Hirsch and Jimmy Carra in November 2023. Photo: Getty
And what is this material? Conservative? Liberal? Or just a sarcastic wit from a pub in a former industrial town? In 2019, Variety reported that Lorne Michaels had cast Gillies as part of an attempt to «appeal to more conservative viewers.»
In a 2022 interview with the New Yorker, Michaels denied this but said Gillies «does make a different point of view. He’s from a part of the world that should also have a voice.” It's worth noting that Michaels recently made a cameo appearance on SNL as Republican candidate Nikki Haley. By these standards, Gillies is unlikely to be involved in politics.
But the main question is: what will he say? Will he bully liberals? Or will he enjoy the approval of a largely liberal elite? Gillis stands at a crossroads in his career — he could offer a career-changing offense in favor of one side or the other. Or he could just do his dads and football exercises.
Another question: how will the SNL left team react to this? Former cast member Tina Fey refused to appear in the same scene as Sarah Palin when she appeared on the show in 2008. In 2022, SNL was forced to deny reports that the show's writers refused to work with «transphobe» Dave Chappelle. As recently as January, Bowen Yang — Gillies' former co-star — was accused of appearing somewhat displeased when Chappelle joined the cast on stage for the final bow, and later expressed his disapproval of Haley's appearance on social media. It will be very interesting to see how much screen time Gillies and Young share on the night of February 24th.
Live from New York, history could be made this Saturday night. Or it could just be a few Midwestern ratings for a slightly insecure comedian who isn't quite sure why he's in the culture wars.
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