Stand-up comedian Shane Gillis did his thing Saturday night live debut this weekend.
The comic, 36, hosted the series for the first time on Saturday night, with rapper 21 Savage joining the show as the musical guest. Gillis’ guest appearance comes five years after his offer to join the show’s cast was withdrawn for making racist jokes on his podcast in 2018.
Joking about his initial offer to join the show in his opening monologue, Gillis said, “I actually, I was fired from this show a while ago,” before adding, “But… don’t ask for it, please and if you don’t know who I am, please don’t Google it. It’s okay, don’t even worry about it.”
“I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t be up here, honestly,” he continued, before joking that he should be “at home” or a “high school football coach” instead.
“Like, God shaped me perfectly to be a high school football coach,” Gillis told the crowd, adding that it was his “true calling.”
“I actually come from a long line of coaches in my family,” Gillis continued, adding “My dad is actually a volunteer assistant high school basketball coach,” before giving a shout out to his father in the audience.
Elsewhere in the monologue, he joked about his relationship with his mom and discussed his family members with Down syndrome. Gillis also participated in a number of hilarious skits during the show, including one where he played a down-on-his-luck basketball player whose life changes when he receives a pair of new gold sneakers from former President Donald Trump, however, instead of sneakers that make him a better player, they give him a new attitude in in which he can convince others that what he believes is true, even if it is not.
In another sketch with Bowen Yang, Kenan Thompson and Chloe Fineman, Gillis played a creepy employee during a meeting about workplace behavior.
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In 2019 SNL announced that Gillis, along with current cast members Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman, will join the sketch comedy series for its 45th season. However, just days after his selection was announced, the comedian drew criticism when a clip from his September 2018 podcast Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast resurfaced for his use of a racial slur.
“Chinatown is freaking crazy,” Gillis tells her co-host, comedian Matt McCusker, in the now-deleted clip. “Let the dick live there.”
He later apologized, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that he was sorry to “anyone who was actually offended.”
“I am a comedian who pushes boundaries,” he wrote at the time. “Sometimes I miss it. If you look at my 10 years of comedy, mostly bad, you’ll find a lot of bad misses. I’m happy to apologize to anyone who was offended by anything I said.”
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The show later announced that they had decided to withdraw their offer to Gillis to join the show, calling his remarks “unacceptable”.
“After speaking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” an SNL spokesperson told PEOPLE in a statement back in 2019.
“We were not aware of his previous statements that appeared in the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable,” the statement said. “We regret that we did not see these clips earlier and that our verification process did not meet our standards.”
Gillis later said he “respected” the show’s decision in the X statement, writing that “of course I wanted a chance to prove myself on SNLbut I understand that would be too much of a distraction.”
“I respect the decision they made. I am truly grateful for the opportunity. I’ve always been a crazy TV guy anyway,” he wrote in 2019.
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Elsewhere in the episode, Gillis [TK sketch].
21 Savage, 31, also took the stage at Rockefeller’s 30, performing his songs [TK] and [TK].
Before his first guest appearance on the comedy series, Gillis appeared in a promotional video, joking about what would be included in his monologue. While rehearsing for some cast members, Gillis talked about it Monkey planet and “Electric Slide” in jokes that fell flat.
Gillis is next set for a series of stand-up shows across North America, starting at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on March 1.
Saturday night live airs Saturdays at 11:30 PM ET on NBC.
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