Lorne Michaels Was Stunned Shane Gillis' “Saturday Night Live” Hiring Sparked 'Overreaction' as Controversial Remarks Resurfaced

Gillis was hired as a featured player in 2019 and fired days later after videos resurfaced of him making racial slurs on his podcast

Lorne Michaels has an interesting perspective when he looks back at the backlash to Saturday Night Live casting Shane Gillis before firing him days later.

The SNL creator, 79, described the period between Gillis being cast in 2019 and his firing after videos surfaced of him making racial slurs as a "bad time" in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

"He got beat up for things that he’d done years earlier and the overreaction to it was so stunning — and the velocity of it was 200 Asian companies were going to boycott the show," Michaels, 79, said. "It became a scandal and I go, 'No, no, he’s just starting and he’s really funny and you don’t know how we’re going to use him.'"

Related: Saturday Night Live Announces Season 50 Lineup Including Jean Smart, Ariana Grande and Chappell Roan

Michaels said that Gillis, 36, "turned out well without SNL," but he still thinks that "everything became way too serious" amidst his resurfaced videos.

"It was like a mania. And the velocity of cancellation — and lots of people deserved to not be liked — it just became not quite the Reign of Terror, but it was like you’re judging everybody on every position they have on every issue as opposed to, 'Are they any good at the thing they do?'"

Michaels also reflected on the controversial decision to have Gillis return to Studio 8H to host the show in February. "When he came back to the show last year, we saw, 'Oh right, he’s really talented, and he would’ve been really good for us,'" he said.

Gillis hosted the Feb. 24 show and addressed the firing directly as he said during his monologue, "I was actually, I was fired from this show a while ago. But... 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, I probably shouldn't be up here, honestly," Gillis continued, before joking that he should instead be "home" or "a high school football coach."

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Gillis was originally introduced to the SNL cast as a featured player in 2019 alongside Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman ahead of season 45, but footage from a podcast episode from the year before that saw him use a racial slur led the late-night sketch comedy show to let him go.

"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL,” an SNL spokesperson told PEOPLE at the time. "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."

The statement said that the show was "not aware of his prior remarks" and called them "offensive, hurtful and unacceptable."

The comedian said he "respected" the show's decision in his own statement on X (formerly Twitter), as he wrote, "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."

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Saturday Night Live season 50 premieres Saturday, Sept. 28 at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC.

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