New SNL cast member Shane Gillis used an anti-Asian racial slur in a 2018 podcast

Variety

Standup comedian Gillis said "Chinatown's f*cking nuts...Let the f*cking ch*nks live there" in a resurfaced video posted to a YouTube channel called Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast in September 2018. Gillis also commented on going to Chinese restaurants. “The translation between you and the waiter is such a f*cking hassle, I’m pointing at it,” he says. Gillis then described the conversation as “nice racism, good racism." The video was resurfaced by comedy critic Seth Simons and has since been deleted. "today SNL announced the hiring of its first cast member of East Asian descent, and also this guy," Simons tweeted, pointing out that Gillis was hired along with Bowen Yang, the first Asian cast member in SNL history. Variety attempted to reach Gillis and NBC for comment, but has yet to hear back.

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• UPDATE: Shane Gillis has a history of racist and homophobic remarks, even against current SNL writers: "It all begs the question: Did Saturday Night Live vet its new cast members? It’s 2019, so at this point, there’s really no excuse for this kind of slip-up," says Megh Wright, who adds that members of Philadelphia's comedy scene -- where Gillis came up -- were surprised by his hiring. “Good Good Comedy Theatre stopped working with him within the past few years because of racist, homophobic, and sexist things he’s said on and offstage,” says Kate Banford, co-owner of the comedy theater.
• CNN opinion writer Jeff Yang, father of Fresh Off the Boat's Hudson Yang (and no relation to Bowen Yang), says of Shane Gillis: "Yeah if you want to know what being a person of color is like, it’s literally that for every Bowen Yang-shaped step you take forward, you also take one racist-a** Shane Gillis-shaped step back. Like, we get the glittery golden stiletto heel of @BowenYang’s awesomeness-fueled ascent to stardom, and then the other shoe drops, and it’s a sh*tkicker boot that’s been used to curbstomp Chinese restaurant delivery guys, oh yay. F*ck this guy. Using the slur 'f*cking chink' in the year 2018 and joking about how much he loves being racist, there’s no meaningful apology he can offer that won’t make every minute he’s on the air a cloud of death. He’s gotta go."
• Gillis has also defended Louis CK: “It’s not like stand-ups were looked at as great members of society before all this stuff happened,” Gillis said in an interview last year. “No, I don’t think anything is affected. What? Just because Louis got caught… No, that’s changed nothing. He’s still the best.”