Shane Gillis addresses ‘SNL’ firing during his opening monologue

TV

By Jack Hobbs

This funnyman’s firing was no joke.

Controversial comedian Shane Gillis addressed his firing from “Saturday Night Live” last night by telling audience members that he “probably shouldn’t be up here.”

“Thank you very much. Yeah, I’m here,” Gillis, 36, told the crowd during his controversial appearance at Studio 8H. “Most of you probably have no idea who I am. I was fired from this show a while ago. Don’t look that up, please. Please don’t Google that. It’s fine.”

“Don’t even worry about it,” Gillis continued. “I probably shouldn’t be up here honestly. I should be at home. I should be a high school football coach.”

Gillis’ whopping eight-minute monologue included several bits from his “anti-woke” stand-up routine which included punchlines about his dad being a girls’ high school basketball coach as well as little boys being their “mom’s gay best friend.”

The monologue also included a bit in which Gillis said that he “dodged” having Down syndrome like his niece.

“My family and I, we actually opened a coffee shop in my hometown for people with Down syndrome to work at and it’s going — Don’t clap!” Gillis said. “It’s going exactly how you think it would go. It’s still well actually … Not because there’s a ton of people getting good service. Everyone’s getting apple juice. We don’t know how to fix that problem.”

In the lead-up to his debut on the iconic late-night show, Gillis reportedly spent the entire week working out his material in local Manhattan comedy clubs.

“He’s going all in,” an insider reported to Page Six.

Sadly for Gillis, it appeared that none of his jokes were being well-received.

“Look, I don’t have any material that can be on TV, alright?” he bleated desperately. “I’m trying my best. Also, this place is extremely well-lit. I can see everyone not enjoying it. This is the most nervous I’ve ever been.”

Gillis’ blundering return to the comedy show comes after he was fired from the cast in 2019 when he was heard spouting several racial and homophobic slurs on an episode of “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast.”

According to Decider, the since-deleted video of Gillis also contained the Pennsylvania native mocking Chinese accents.

“After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,’” said a spokesperson for the show 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,” the statement continued. “We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard.”

Had he taken his place in the hallowed halls of “SNL,” Gillies would have starred in the show’s 45th season alongside the funny man Bowen Yang, who is the program’s first gay Asian cast member to join the show.