New ‘SNL’ Cast Member Shane Gillis Used Anti-Asian Racial Slur in 2018 Podcast Episode (Video)
Brand-new “Saturday Night Live” cast member Shane Gillis, whose casting was just announced Thursday morning, used a racial slur and stereotypes about Asians in a September 2018 episode of his podcast “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast.”
“Chinatown’s f–ing nuts,” Gillis says to comedian Matt McCusker in a since-deleted YouTube video from a September 2018 episode of the podcast. “Let the f–ing ch-nks live there, huh?” Later in the same episode, Gillis imitates stereotypes about the way Asian immigrants speak English, and references stereotypes about Chinese culture.
Reps for NBC, “SNL” and Gillis did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment Thursday.
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The video surfaced on Twitter after it was posted by freelance journalist Seth Simons.
today SNL announced the hiring of its first cast member of East Asian descent, and also this guy pic.twitter.com/0FAGJZJUkK
— Seth Simons (@sasimons) September 12, 2019
In a second video from the same podcast episode, Gillis says, “An Asian trying to learn English bothers me more than someone listening to Lil Uzi Vert while I’m trying to eat f—ing dinner,” adding, “Nice racism. I love to be f—ing racist.”
One of the other two new cast members added to “SNL” Thursday was the show’s first member of full Asian decent, Bowen Yang. Yang moved up from his position as a staff writer on the show, for which he was hired last year. Groundlings alum Chloe Fineman is the third of the three new additions announced Thursday.
The 45th season premiere of “SNL” airs Sept. 28 on NBC.
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