Comedian Shane Gillis has been fired from Saturday Night Live (SNL) as one of three new cast members.
The 31-year-old came under fire after racist and homophobic comments made on a podcast in 2018 resurfaced online.
Posted to a YouTube channel called 'Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast', one clip shows Gillis and fellow comedian Matt McCusker making fun of Chinatown.
“Chinatown’s f—ing nuts,” Gillis says in the video, which has since been deleted.
“Let the f—ing ch-nks live there.”
In another episode, the comic , using anti-gay slurs including “faggot”.
"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL," an SNL spokesperson
The statement continued: "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 comedian and his impressive audition for SNL.
"We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable.
"We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard."
The comedian responded to the news on Twitter.
“Of course I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL,” he wrote.
"But I understand it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made… I was always a Mad TV guy anyway.”
SNL will move forward with the hiring of two other new cast members, instagram impressionist Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang - the show's first full-time Chinese-American cast member.
