Due To The Controversy of Racial Slurs, Shane Gillis Out of 'Saturday Night Live!'

The long-withstanding saga surrounding Shane Gillis has now seemingly ended. The comedian is confirmed to not be a part of Saturday Night Live!'s (SNL) upcoming season after coming under fire for using racial and homophobic slurs during a podcast conversation.

For the uninitiated, it all began when Gillis was confirmed to be added to the cast of the variety-sketch comedy series for the upcoming season. Right after that, an old video where he is having a conversation on a podcast was surfaced which involved him using racial and homophobic slurs in the name of comedy. This sparked outrage amongst everyone and people, along with members of the fraternity condemned this entirely.

 However, the biggest question that was yet to be answered was what will be the result of this when it comes to his appointment in SNL. That has now been taken care of as Gillis is ousted from the show. 

"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL," a show spokesperson said Monday on behalf of executive producer Lorne Michaels. "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."

In his own statement on Twitter, Gillis said in part, "Of course I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL, but I understand it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made. I'm honestly grateful for the opportunity. I was always a Mad TV guy anyway."

Gillis is the latest comedian to deal with backlash over past offensive comments. Trevor Noah was criticized ahead of replacing Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show over old tweets, including ones deemed anti-Semitic or offensive towards aboriginal women, while Kevin Hart gave up his Oscars hosting gig this year when earlier homophobic tweets of his resurfaced.