Shane Gillis Explained: SNL Firing, Netflix Fame, and Why Everyone’s Talking About Him

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Featured: Shane Gillis, Matt McCusker, Lorne Michaels, Joe Rogan, John McKeever

What’s in This Episode

• Shane Gillis SNL firing and controversy (September 2019)
• Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast origins and audience building
• Joe Rogan’s long-form podcast format and cultural impact
• Shane Gillis podcast clips resurfacing and offensive language
• Lorne Michaels defending Shane Gillis after NBC forced firing
• Gilly and Keeves YouTube sketches and character work

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mac In this summer on Saturday, is gonna start doing some deep dives on some topics. Today, we’ll take a look at Shane Gillis. And here’s the thing about the Shane Gillis story that nobody tells. Right.

Everybody starts with SNL. Everybody starts with September twenty nineteen, the firing, the controversy, the tweets, the whole thing, And it’s understandable because it’s a clean narrative. Guy gets the biggest job in comedy, loses it three days later, and somehow ends up bigger than he ever would have been had he kept SNL. Good story, writes itself. The more interesting story, the one that actually tells you something useful about where comedy is right now, starts a few years earlier, in a much less glamorous place.

It starts with two guys from Pennsylvania doing a podcast that almost nobody was listening to, talking about comedy in a way that felt less like a product and more like a conversation that needed to be recorded. Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, two guys genuinely entertaining each other, and occasionally remembering there might be people listening. There were a lot of comedy podcasts in twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, even more so now. Most have a recognizable formula comedian. You’ve heard of a guest, you’ve heard of some stories about the road, maybe some bits that didn’t make the special.

Thing about Matt and Chane was neither of them were famous enough yet to have that kind of show. Plus the show had a specific sensibility that was weird and funny in its own right. It wasn’t using the podcast as a promotional vehicle, it was using the podcast as the actual thing. Joe Rogan gets credited with proving that the long form podcast could be a legitimate media format, but what Rogan also did was create a permission structure for comedians to build audiences outside the traditional pipeline. Before Rogan, the consensus was that the path when something like this, you do clubs, you go on late night, you get a Comedy Central special, maybe you get a sitcom.

Somewhere in that process, the industry validates you and the public finds you. Rogan didn’t quite follow that path. He did TV Fear Factor UFC. But Rogan experience operated completely outside that validation system. By the end of the twenty tens, Rogan had more reach than basically any TV show, and it built it by just talking to people for three hours.

Now, what he pointed out now, what Rogan accomplished was that the gigkeepers were optional. Shane Gillis was building something real on top of his podcast. The podcast was getting passed around by people who cared about stand up and Shane got a reputation in the clubs as someone whose material was genuinely different in olden times. There’s a version of the next few years. We would have grinded through the normal progression, maybe it gainst a Comedy Central half hour, but instead he got the call to SNL.

No, you remember that. That was a big deal. Shane was funny, original, and the fact that SNL was adding him felt like confirmation of what his audience had been saying.

And then three days later, old podcast clips surfaced some bits with some rac…

It was kind of surreal because I went from I was one of the first people to get like canceled or however you want to say it. Consequences however, Yeah, however you want to say it. It doesn’t matter what we call it. It is what it is, right, But uh, I was one of the first people to go from I was doing. I was poor.

I was not famous at all. I was poor, and then I got canceled immediately, like that was my thing, Like right, it was a very famous and then yeah, most people that get canceled or yeah, you got canceled on the way. I got canceled immediately. Yeah. They literally were like how about this guy?

And everyone was like no. The official statement was polite and final. Lorden Michaels does not do messy public disputes. Shane was out USA Today September twelfth, twenty nineteen. Shane gillis one of three new featured players on SNL is apologizing.

Shane posted to Twitter, I’m a comedian who pushes boundaries. I sometimes missed some happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said. Note the actually in there, the clip that was pulled, Shane said, I’ll quote it directly from USA Today here Chinatown’s expletive nuts. Let the expletive live there, using a racial slur for the second expletive. Shane’s apology continues, if you go through my ten years of comedy, most of it is bad, You’re going to find a lot of bad misses.

My intention is never to hurt anyone, but I’m trying to be the best comedian I can, and sometimes that requires risks. From The Independent, October twenty fifth, twenty twenty four. Lorne Michaels, the creator of SNL, has said that he didn’t want to fire Shane Gillis from the show, but was ordered to by executives at NBC. Lauren told the Whorl Street Journal that was very strong from the people in charge, and obviously I was not on that side, but I understood it. Lauren said he kept in touch with Shane after the firing.

Michael said he said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world. I was angry. I thought, you haven’t even seen what we’re gonna do and what I’m trying to bring out in him, because I thought he was the real thing. After the firing, an SNL spokesperson in Or issued a statement which reads, after talking with Shane Gillis. We have decided 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 committe and his impressive audition for SNL. We were not aware of his prior marks 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. Shane responded to the news of his firing on Twitter, saying, I’m a comedian.

It was funny enough to get SNL that can’t get taken away. 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, honestly grateful for the opportunity. I was always a mad TV guy anyway, After all that. The discourse that followed depended on which side you were on.

Was it a reckoning with the kind of comedy that gets platformed, or an example of outrage culture eating someone who was clearly not a bad person. Or some complicated thing in between those two positions. Now, Shane’s statement is interesting. He didn’t grovel in the way that crisis PR people usually suggest one does. But he also didn’t go on offense, and he went back to work.

He did the podcast, he kept doing clubs. He didn’t disappear. And here’s what the TV executives missed. A huge number of people already felt like they knew Shane Gilly. They’ve been listening to the podcast and watching the clips.

They had a relationship with him that preceded SNL. When SNL fired him, those people didn’t update their opinion of Shane based on SNL’s decision. If anything, his fans dug in harder. Then there’s the Gillian Keeves stuff. Shane and John McKeever started doing character videos that lived on YouTube and existed outside the podcast ecosystem and outside the stand up ecosystem, just doing their own thing.

Gilly is a character Shane does, kind of a dumb, sweet, vaguely threatening guy from Pennsylvania, and the sketches have a handmade quality that it feels unpolished. Their production value is intentionally low. The pacing is often ways that feel deliberate they’re funny in a way that’s generally hard to explain if you haven’t seen them. Hello, I’m Bob Isis of Isis Toyota, and we have a great collection of pre owned, certified Toyotas. But there’s one thing I want to make very clear, and it’s that we have nothing to do with the terrorists over there in the Middle East right now, and that’s why we are the good Isis all right, listen, yeah, lean into the Isist thing.

It’s a good marketing tool, the great marketing tool. I agree with Barbie. I think you should be like here at Iss Toyota will behead the competition. Yes, no, we’re not doing this. What are you guys talking about.

We’re not wishing death to any of our enemies. We are wishing death to low the high prices. Me and Barbie. We can hold AK forty seven. Yeah no, no, that would be so cool.

So I’m holding an AK forty seven. She’s holding AK forty seven. You’re like, we gotta go both toyotas and I I can be doing that like terrorist turkey gobble thing, you know what I mean. We’re like good. Enough at Ices Toyota.

We have nothing to do with Aboo Bakar albak Dottie and his vicious gang of thugs. All we’re trying to do is put you into an affordable tree owned, certified Toyota. What’s notable about it, it’s it’s proof of something that not every stand up can pull off, which is being funny in multiple formats. It also helped Shane reach more people because you might not be ready to listen to two hours of him and Matt, but you’ll watch a four minute sketch on YouTube where something weird and funny happens. Different entry points, different audience relationships, all building towards the same thing.

By the time Shane’s Netflix special That’s My Time came out, Shane was operating with an audience that had been built over years through channels that Netflix had nothing to do with. The special was good, confidently good, the kind of stand up special where you can tell the comedians knows exactly what they’re doing and it’s comfortable taking their time. A lot of guys would knock on the front door. Not these guys, not our guys, not our guys. Our guys went through the wall.

They blew up his roll, and they used dogs beautiful dogs. Beautiful dogs is the funniest detail. It’s true. They actually did use It was the Army Rangers, and they used dogs because they were afraid howback daddy was gonna be wearing a suicide vest, so they killed him with dogs in a robot and then made fun of him for crying. Let that guy cry.

That’s the scariest death I’ve ever heard of. That dude was laying in his bed in the middle of night. His wall exploded ten dogs in a robot. Netflix wasn’t breaking Shane Gillis to the world. They were confirming what people already knew.

Historically, the platform, whether it be HBO or in later days, Comedy Central and then Netflix was the thing that made you the special was how people found you. Netflix wanted this special because they’d watched enough comedians to understand that an audience that was earned through years of direct relationship is more durable and more engaged than an audience that came through a platform recommendation algorithm. Then in twenty twenty four, Shane hosted Saturday Night Live Ladies and Gentlemen. Shane Giless. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.

It’s yeah, I’m here. They Most of you probably have no idea who I am. I was, actually I was fired from this show while ago. But if you know, don’t look that up. Please.

If you don’t know who I am, please don’t google that. It’s fine, don’t even worry about it. I don’t know this is I probably shouldn’t be up here. Honestly, Lord Michaels does not do things accidentally. Inviting Shane Gillis back to host was not a neutral decision.

It was a signal that this person is large enough that the firing now looks like a mistake. I thought Shane was very funny that night. Some people did not. I thought it was great. He did a monologue that acknowledged the history without making the whole episode about the history that brings us to today.

The comics coming up right now are watching all this. They’re watching the way Shane navigated the firing, watching the way the podcast became a real thing, watching the YouTube stuff find its own audience, watching the Netflix deal, watching the SNL hosting. They’re learning that you don’t have to go through the old paths. Doesn’t mean SNL doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean Netflix doesn’t matter. It means they’re different now.

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