The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2019–2024
SNL fired Shane Gillis before he ever appeared on air
NBC announced a new cast member, podcast clips surfaced four days later, and he was gone before the season premiere — then he came back to host.
NBC · Saturday Night Live · 2019-09-16
What happened
On 12 September 2019 Saturday Night Live announced three new cast members for its 45th season, among them comedian Shane Gillis — the same day the show announced its first full-time cast member of East Asian descent. Within days, audio clips of Gillis using racist and homophobic language on his podcast surfaced, and the announcement became the story.
On 16 September NBC reversed the hire. Its statement admitted the failure directly: 'We want SNL to have a variety of voices and points of view within the show... 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 never appeared on the show — the season premiere was two weeks away.
Why it happened
- The hire and the fire were the same sentence: the show announced its most diverse cast in years on the same day it put a comedian with a record of offensive language in it.
- NBC's own statement named the process as the failure — the vetting did not see the clips, so the company paid for the discovery with the hire itself.
- The reversal in four days showed the hire was reversible but the announcement was not: the correction cost the show a story it could not take back.
The lesson
A casting announcement is a promise about who the show is: when the vetting misses what the internet finds in a day, the only correct move is the public reversal — and the cost is the story itself.
Aftermath
Gillis went on to become one of the most successful stand-ups of his generation, and in 2024 — five years after the firing — he returned to Saturday Night Live as host.
Sources
- Shane Gillis fired from 'SNL' in 2019. Now he's back as host — NBC News, 24 February 2024
- Shane Gillis dropped from 'SNL' after racist remarks surface — CBS News, 16 September 2019
spotted an error? The club wants to know.
More like this
A Cupshe staffer emailed 'we would not collab with black people' — hired four days earlier
Growth Cave sold 'AI software' that automated almost nothing — the FTC made it pay $48.6M
Equinox's AI ad showed an Asian woman's head mounted on a stand — it ran for months
Somewhere, someone solved the problem this company failed at. 2nd Opinion →
Comments · 0
Sign in to join the comments.