Comedian Shane Gillis will host the next episode of Saturday Night Live on February 24, with 21 Savage acting as the musical guest.
The news was confirmed on the show’s social media pages, and it is particularly noteworthy as Gillis had previously been fired from the show’s cast in 2019 after footage surfaced of him making racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments.
Gillis was fired before he was able to make an appearance or writing contribution to the show, after audio from a previous podcast emerged of him making a slew of offensive jokes.
Next show!!! pic.twitter.com/P6J6QQqOFY
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 4, 2024
“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” a representative of the show said at the time. “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 a comedian and his impressive audition for SNL. 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.”
In response, Gillis said, “I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries. I sometimes miss. If you go through my 10 years of comedy, most of it bad, you’re going to find a lot of bad misses. I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.”
The current season of SNL, the 49th overall, began back in October. Gillis will be hosting the 12th episode of the season, following on from recent hosts Dakota Johnson, Jacob Elordi, Emma Stone and Adam Driver.
On this week’s episode, host Ayo Edebiri acknowledged previous jokes she had made about musical guest Jennifer Lopez in a sketch on the show. The Bear star had previously been critical of J.Lo in a 2020 podcast, which had recently resurfaced.
“Okay, we get it,” she said in the sketch. “It’s wrong to leave mean comments, or post comments just for clout, or run your mouth on a podcast, and you don’t consider the impact because you’re 24 and stupid.”
In January, the show poked fun at Donald Trump’s comments suggesting sick voters should still turn up and vote for him, even if they die afterwards.
Impersonator James Austin Johnson said: “My people love me. They’ve got the old people waiting in the snow for two hours to vote for Trump. ‘Oh darling, I’m dying. I gotta do one last thing. I gotta vote for Trump.’
“We just need them to stay alive until November. Stay alive until November. Just pull that lever and drop dead. Why? Because I am sent by God and God has a plan for me, or whatever,” he added.
“2024’s going to be a very exciting year. I’m either going to jail, be president, or frankly The Purge. Perhaps all three. Let’s spin the chamber.”
