Lorne Michaels Says He Opposed Decision to Fire Shane Gillis from ‘SNL’: ‘That Was Very Strong from the People in Charge’

“Saturday Night Live” creator and producer Lorne Michaels is speaking out on his recent show regrets.

The NBC Universal mega-producer told The Wall Street Journal that he was “angry” that NBC executives opted to fire comedian Shane Gillis from “Saturday Night Live” in 2019. Gillis was announced as a cast member but never appeared on the series; he was let go after his racially-insensitive comments about Asian people that he made on a podcast were resurfaced. He used the slur “ch*nks” saying, “Chinatown’s f*cking nuts. Let the f*cking ch*nks live there.”

The now-deleted video from 2018 was from his podcast “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast.” The video was recirculated right as “SNL” announced Bowen Yang was to become the first Asian-American cast member. Gillis later made his hosting debut in February 2024 during Season 49.

“He said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world,” Michaels said. “I was angry. I thought, ‘You haven’t seen what we’re going to do, and what I’m going to try to bring out in him, because I thought he was the real thing.’”

Michaels added that he disagreed with the decision of NBC to fire Gillis. “That was very strong from the people in charge. And obviously I was not on that side,” he said, “but I understood it.”

As part of the 50th anniversary coverage, Michaels also recently told The Hollywood Reporter that Gillis “got beat up for things that he’d done years earlier and the overreaction to it was so stunning.” Michaels added that advertisers were threatening to pull out of “SNL,” saying, “200 Asian companies were going to boycott the show” due to Gillis’ past comments.

“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,” Michaels said, “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?'”

At the time of Gillis’ firing in 2019, a spokesperson said on behalf of Michaels that the “SNL” team was “not aware of his prior remarks” before his hiring.

“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining ‘SNL,’” the statement reads. “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.’ 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 issued an apology on Instagram, writing, “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.”

Michaels was recently fictionalized in film “Saturday Night,” and portrayed by Gabriel LaBelle.