A clip that surfaced on Twitter on the night of Monday, May 29th, shows famed and hilarious comedian Dave Chapelle welcoming canceled SNL writer Shane Gillis up on stage with him, saying, “alright, this guy I’m bringing on stage is so funny he got canceled at the beginning of his career.”
Gillis then does his bit, talking about the presidents getting assassinated and saying Trump would be “talking sh**” about the shooter if shot in the middle of a speech, before adding that his favorite part of the joke is saying Biden is the one president who could be assassinated with a punch.
“I think Biden is the first president. You could punch assassinate. You just, you just walk right up to him,” Gilllis said, joking about Biden. Chapelle was doubled over laughing at the joke, though Gillis added that “a lot of people didn’t like” the Biden part. Watch Chapelle die laughing as Gillis tells the joke here:
NBC, for its part, fired Gillis from SNL in 2019 after jokes he made about Asians resurfaced. Commenting on his firing in a statement, the network with the formerly funny show said, “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 network also said, “After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL. 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 a comedian and his impressive audition for SNL.”
Gillis, for his part, pushed back on the outrage on Twitter, saying that the joke was a miss and asking for feedback on his jokes. In his words: “I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries. 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.”
Continuing, he added that he would apologize to anyone who was “actually offended” by the jokes, hinting that he thinks few actually were and the faux hurt was just outrage warriors trying to get him fired. In that part of the statement, he said, “I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I 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.”
Gillis also said that it “felt ridiculous” for comedians to be making public statements about their jokes and that while he would have like having an opportunity to “prove” himself as an SNL writer, he understood that the outrage mob had turned his presence into too much of a “distraction” and that he respected the network’s decision to give him the book. He then said that he was “always a mad tv guy anyway.”
objectively the funniest clip out there @Shanemgillis pic.twitter.com/rCjGuMZeoJ
— YAK DON (@RyaninCleveland) May 29, 2023
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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