Shane Gillis Is Making His ‘SNL’ Return — And It Reveals The Show’s Troubling Double Standard

“Saturday Night Live” is having a monumental year. The iconic sketch comedy show is in its 50th season, and the anniversary celebration has been years in the making.

In the past few months, features have been published in Vulture, Elle and People; commercial sponsorships have aired with CeraVe, T-Mobile and Volkswagen, and a four-part historical docuseries (“SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night”) and full-length music documentary (“Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music”) were released on Peacock.

The build-up culminated in a massive homecoming for “SNL” cast, crew and honorary affiliates earlier this month as they presented a live anniversary special celebrating half a century of the show and its impact.

It was an event of escapism, three or so hours to simply revel in nostalgia and joy.

Then, the show announced that stand-up comedian Shane Gillis would host the first show post-anniversary. As a longtime “SNL” fan, the cheer dissipated, and reality seeped back in.

Gillis was cast on the show in 2019 but fired four days later after clips of him using racist, sexist and homophobic language, including a racial slur for Chinese people, surfaced on the internet.

“I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries. I sometimes miss,” Gillis wrote in a post on Twitter at the time that has since been deleted. “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. My intention is never to hurt anyone but I am trying to be the best comedian I can be and sometimes that requires risks.”

Even after Gillis’ public dismissal from the show, he still stood by his controversial comments. “I definitely wouldn’t have changed what we did on our podcast,” Gillis told comedian Theo Von on his podcast in 2021. “That’s how I got to New York.”

Although he never made it onto the show as a cast member, he was invited to host an episode in 2024 and is now hosting again almost exactly one year later.

The choice to invite him back so quickly is bizarre, considering his first appearance was tepidly received by critics, with NPR saying that “viewers got an OK episode that, more than anything, might leave them wondering why a middling talent like Gillis got tapped to host the show in the first place.”

With Gillis’ hosting stints, the message from “SNL” seems to be that hate speech, even comedically employed, may rob you of ensemble work, but it surely won’t stop you from getting to be the star of the show someday. The repercussions seem to be temporary, and you will be rewarded tenfold if you wait long enough.

The 50th anniversary special provided a moment of lucidity for the show and its muddy morality. It featured a segment called “In Memoriam,” which is described online as “SNL’s tribute to the canceled and tasteless jokes of the past.” The self-deprecating montage exposes moments featuring ethnic stereotypes, racist slurs and problematic guests.

Although presented in a comedic manner, the segment appeared to be a blanket acknowledgment of questionable choices from a supposedly bygone era. The announcement of Gillis’ return as host directly following the anniversary negates any humor in the segment. These controversial choices of the past are, in fact, still being made in the present and for the future.

I’ve watched “SNL” for years, so I get how the show works. The “In Memoriam” segment is just a highlight reel of “tasteless” moments that aired within the past 50 years. Politics and current events are integral to “SNL,” with politicians and public figures of varying backgrounds often making appearances in cameos or hosting gigs.

“It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels said just before Donald Trump was elected for the first time, according to a new biography.

Although the show sometimes draws criticism for being liberal-leaning, the bias that Michaels claims not to possess seems to keep welcoming back stars who lean toward the right.The comedy-washing of extremism on “SNL” began with the invitation for then-presidential nominee Trump to host an episode in 2015. That June, NBC cut business ties with Trump over his racist remarks about Mexican immigrants; he appeared on “SNL” in November.

At the time, Michaels said he thought Trump’s candidacy was “a big joke.” However, biographer Susan Morrison talked to staffers who said that behind the scenes, Michaels urged toning down harshness toward Trump in sketches and allowing the nominee to “show some charm.” After Trump won the 2016 election, “SNL” cast and writers at the time, Morrison writes, “felt shame and anger. Many of them believed ‘SNL’ bore some responsibility for Trump’s win.”

Similar staff tensions arose when Michaels invited billionaire Elon Musk to host an episode in 2021 amid the pandemic, despite Musk being a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation. In 2020, Twitter began removing and labeling false claims about the coronavirus, but when Musk bought the platform in 2022, it stopped policing COVID misinformation.

The morality crisis of “Saturday Night Live” is a direct result of Michaels’ leadership. Whether it’s due to being out of touch or desperate for a boost in ratings, scandal has trumped integrity in recent years. Michaels seems to operate in hypocrisies, offering surface-level repairs for problems he seemingly perpetrates behind the scenes.

For instance, let’s examine the show’s recent history with stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle, who has normalized transphobia in his comedy for years. Michaels invited him to host in 2016, 2020 and 2022, all years in which general or midterm elections took place. At the same time, Celeste Yim, the show’s first nonbinary writer, joined the staff in 2020, and the first nonbinary cast member, Molly Kearney, was added to the lineup in 2022.

When Chappelle hosted in 2022, Yim sat out the show that week. This led to Chappelle openly mocking Yim — whose name was initially kept anonymous in reports but was later confirmed — in his dress rehearsal monologue, with Michaels advising him to take out the joke for the live show. Earlier this month, Vulture published further information on the incident.

“Michaels didn’t object to the joke per se, but he and other producers immediately started fielding angry texts from the cast and writers who felt betrayed after working hard all week to put on the show with Chappelle,” Vulture reported. “After rehearsal, Michaels warned Chappelle against telling the joke on air. ‘You’ll lose the staff,’ he said. The point was less that the joke was unfair — or lame — and more that telling it would not be in service of putting on a good show.”

Here’s what’s baffling about these host choices: Is it so hard to create a working environment that doesn’t prioritize pandering to problematic comedians over the dignity of its own employees? Why should Yim have to write for Chappelle, who was invited back to host again earlier this year? Why should Bowen Yang, a gay man who is also the first Chinese American cast member of “SNL,” repeatedly have to act alongside Gillis, who has spewed racial and homophobic slurs under the guise of it being “comedy?” It’s frankly embarrassing for Michaels to willfully put his staff in these situations.

“SNL” contradicts itself due to the ethical tensions between staff and leadership; sometimes, its host choices don’t match the tenor of the show’s regular commentary. It makes “SNL” feel spineless amid rampant bigotry and power-hungry leadership in this country.

Writers can air searing zingers about Trump and Musk, but the jokes lose bite when viewers recall that the show offered them each 90-minute episodes to humanize them. The show can make strides in diversity by hiring staff from marginalized communities, but it doesn’t feel like progress when people like Chappelle and Gillis keep being offered this major platform despite making bigoted comments about the communities the new hires come from.

If Michaels wants “SNL” to be a place where hatred is casually celebrated, then so be it. After all, Trump, Musk, Chappelle and Gillis were nowhere to be found in the problematic guest section of the anniversary’s “In Memoriam” segment, implying that the show doesn’t feel any remorse for being complicit in their rhetoric.

For as much as the modern iteration of “SNL” tends to mock bigotry and corrupt politics, it sure does seem hell-bent on platforming those who perpetrate and represent them.