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‘I Ended The Call By…’: SNL Star Bowen Yang Recalls Shane Gillis’ Apologetic Phone Call Before He Got Fired
SNL star Bowen Yang is ready to move past the infamous controversy between him and former co-star Shane Gillis that erupted five years ago, check out the detailed history!
Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang created history by being the first Chinese American and third publicly out gay cast member. In 2019, he was hired by the show alongside former member Shane Gillis and became an “incidental” part of a larger story about cancel culture. Before joining SNL, Gillis used racial-sensitive slurs offensive to Asian people in his podcast, which went viral.
So when he joined the show at the same time as an Asian comedian, it stirred a lot of controversy, which led to his eventual termination. In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Yang recalled getting a call from Gillis after the incident and before they were meant to show up on SNL sets.
The comedian was shrouded by the media over the controversy, but some people were by his side, reassuring him. He woke up to texts from his agent that read, "I'm so sorry." Later, SNL boss Lorne Michaels told him that he didn't need him to be the "poster child for racial harmony."
When he finally texted Gillis to discuss the issue, he got an apologetic callback. “I ended the call by saying, ‘I guess I’ll just see you at work. He laughed and said, ‘Sure,’ and hung up. Then they announced that he was fired,” Yang recalled.
Five years after the incident, Gillis was roped in as the show’s host in February 2024. It did create controversy but Yang, who also shared a hug with him on stage, is ready to let the bygones be bygones. “Anytime our names are in the same sentence, at least in a journalistic way, it always feels deleterious,” the Wicked actor told Variety in an interview.
He added that both of them have done “enough things” in their careers to really not have that one incident looming over them and affecting future projects. The multi-hyphenate star also spoke about Gillis’s recent hosting gig which he hoped would be a way for them to finally move on. “I was just really curious about what that show would be like and if it would be an opportunity to really move past it,” he added.
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