Was Shane Gillis the right choice to host Saturday Night Live?

On Saturday evening, rising star comedian Shane Gillis made his hosting debut on Saturday Night Live. 

This might not seem like a big deal, as up-and-coming comedians are chosen to host SNL all the time. But Gillis' history with the famed variety show is considerably messier.

In 2019, Gillis was hired along with Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman as an SNL cast member. Within a week of his hiring, he was subsequently fired after clips of him from a podcast he hosted with fellow comedian Matt McCusker resurfaced. In these clips, he mocked Asian people's accents, called them "ch---" and tried to rank comedians by race, gender and sexuality.

Gillis later addressed his comments, writing in a Tweet — that has since been deleted — "I'm a comedian who pushes boundaries, I sometimes miss … I'm happy to apologize to anyone who's actually offended by anything I've said."

Based on Gillis' history with SNL and his unsavoury comments, the internet was surprised when the show asked him to host, leaving many fans to wonder if his firing meant anything.

To give their reactions to Gillis' hosting debut and his previous racist and homophobic comments, comedian Cassie Cao and critic Kathryn VanArendonk join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud on Commotion.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus what audiences can expect from the SIXTH Walking Dead spinoff, The Ones Who Live, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Cassie, I'm starting with you on this one. What did you think when you heard SNL had booked Shane Gillis to host the show?    

Cassie: Oh, I'm not surprised. I feel like we all know that being cancelled is just a promotion at this point. But I do think that any time this sort of thing comes up, it just reminds me that whenever we think us BIPOC performers have made progress, that we've made it and we've had representation, it really always highlights to me how much it's still not our house. We're just a guest here. 

And it really highlights to me the importance of having to cultivate our own communities and our own structures, because otherwise, we just serve as a function in this greater machine that we really have no control over and doesn't really care about us. 

Elamin: Kathryn, I'm interested in the idea of Shane coming out and saying, "You've probably never heard of me. Please don't Google me." You've been on the Shane Gillis watch for a moment. You have a lot of thoughts about his style and his approach and why that might be resonating right now. Can you talk a little bit about why Shane Gillis and why right now?  

Kathryn: Since he was fired from SNL, he's actually had two specials. One was a YouTube special, one was this Netflix special that came out last year, and both of them are doing a style of standup that is really popular. He actually does it, I think, much better than most of the other standups who are working in this kind of space. He actually has craft. He clearly has worked on a lot of this material.

The idea is that he will tell these jokes with subject matter that sound like they are going to be incredibly awful. He will do these dog whistle racism jokes. He did one in the monologue that was about Down syndrome. You can tell how well that did not go over in his monologue. When you listen to where the joke actually goes, he tends to try and undermine the initial shock of those premises by actually providing more of a thoughtful or at least personal connection. That Down syndrome joke from the monologue is a great example. He said he clearly knows people [with Down syndrome]. He has done that material before.

His work is able to straddle this line for both super right-wing audiences who want a dude who looks and sounds like them, who they can cheer for when they hear terrible things. But he also appeals to audiences who are moderates who feel at home with his kind of middle stance on a lot of this stuff. 

Elamin: Cassie, SNL has had controversial comedians host in the past. They had on Andrew Dice Clay, Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle. Chapelle has basically an open-door policy. Anytime that Dave Chappelle wants to walk through the doors of SNL, he seems to. What, if any, kind of precedent do you think SNL sets with having Shane Gillis host?   

Cassie: I think the only precedent SNL is setting or at least confirming is that they have very little self-awareness about who their audience is and that they keep trying to alienate the audience that is already loyal to them, to reach out to a crowd that is not interested in them. 

Elamin: Kathryn, let's get into what Shane Gillis telegraphs about how SNL sees itself. What do you make of his choice and what that says about SNL right now?

Kathryn: It is an election year in the United States and they are staring down the barrel of months of needing to be politically relevant to two groups. And it's impossible to be relevant to both of them. So when you're trying to figure out "who am I going to get as a host that is going to be able to bring in the entire country?" (which is also a futile exercise at this point, because that does not happen in any form) your options are athletes and movie stars.

And they are often bad at being on SNL. Sometimes you get a gem and then you're like, "Let's book them forever." But often that's not the case. So, standups do tend to do better. Nate Bargatze actually was a great example of a kind of middle-of-the-road comedian. No one's sure about his political stance because he mostly talks about being American, his family and golf. He did a long thing about golf in his last special. And so this is the kind of thing that Shane Gillis is trying to reach out to.   

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview produced by Ty Callender