Earlier this week, Saturday Night Live announced Season 45 would introduce three new cast members. The news that Bowen Yang will be SNL's first Asian-American full-time cast member was met with praise. The joy was quickly overshadowed when footage of another one of the new cast members using anti-Asian slurs resurfaced.
Shane Gillis received backlash for comments made during a 2018 episode of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, where he said, "Chinatown's fucking nuts. Let the fucking c***ks live there."
In a more recent comment this May on the Real Ass Podcast, Gillis also referred to 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang as a "commie Jew c***k."
While Gillis has already responded to the controversy over his Chinatown comments, Saturday Night Live and NBC remain silent.
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Yang has addressed Gillis' controversial comments on Twitter Saturday.
"Shane—I prefer comedy that makes people think and doesn't take cheap shots," Yang said. "But I'm happy to sit down and talk with you if you'd like."
In a follow-up tweet, Yang added, "For the record, I do not think he should lose his job. We would benefit from being more forgiving rather than punitive. We are all human."
Gillis didn't respond as of Saturday afternoon. He and his co-host Matt McCusker previously compared Koreans and Japanese people with mocking accents in another episode of their podcast. They also appeared on Cum Town this year and made transphobic remarks.