SNL adds first Asian cast member while another is under fire over anti-Asian slur

Saturday Night Live has added its first Asian cast member, and in the interest of balance, also added its first openly anti-Asian cast member.

Bowen Yang, who is Chinese American, has been a writer for the show since 2018, and has had acting credits on Broad City and High Maintenance. He co-hosts the podcast, Las Culturistas.

The casting is significant for Saturday Night Live, which has been criticized in the past for its historical lack of diversity. Previous cast members Fred Armisen and Rob Schneider are both part Asian.

Chloe Fineman, who is known for her celebrity impressions, was also added to the cast.

While congratulations rolled in for Yang and the show on social media, the freelance journalist Seth Simons uncovered a clip of Shane Gillis, another of the show’s hires announced on Thursday, making unquestionably racist comments about Chinese people.

In the clip from September 2018, which Simons noted was deleted, Gillis mocks Chinatown and refers to Chinese people by slurs. He imitates the way Chinese people pronounce English words, and complains about having trouble communicating with a Chinese waiter.

“An Asian trying to learn English bothers me more than someone listening to, like, Lil Uzi Vert while I’m trying to eat my fucking dinner,” he laughs in a second clip.

The clips came from Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast. In addition to what Gillis says in the clips, he also laughs and engages with the other comedian when he talks about how Chinese food is “dishonest” and full of chemicals, and sexualizes Asian women.

Officials from Saturday Night Live did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the hiring of Gillis.

Megh Wright, a comedy editor at Splitsider, noted that Gillis’ whole schtick appeared to center around racism, homophobia and bigotry, and that the 2018 clips were not isolated incidents.

“While Gillis clearly put some effort into scraping his history from the internet beforehand, there’s an entire subreddit dedicated to his podcast that’s filled with homophobic slurs, even against current SNL writers, and it’s very easy to find on Google,” Wright wrote.

Gillis later responded to the calls for SNL to fire him by posting a statement on Twitter: “I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries,” he wrote. “I sometimes miss. 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.”