Bowen Yang has once again found himself dragged into the controversy surrounding Shane Gillis‘ 2019 firing from Saturday Night Live.
The breakout star from SNL addressed a critical comment made by a disgruntled social media user. Michelle Best, who Yang recognized as a background actor on SNL, accused Yang of being responsible for Gillis’ termination.
In a recent Instagram post from SNL, Best commented, “Can we acknowledge that Bowen Yang bitched him off the show – and he’s the bigger man to come host after being unfairly ditched bc of a whiny queen. SNL fired him as a hater. He’s not. He’s very kind and has smart humor and stands up to bullying. Good for him!”
Yang directly responded to Best’s comment with a concise reply. He did not address Best’s defense of Gillis but did refute the claims that he played a role in Gillis’ departure from the show.
“Didn’t do any of this but I wrote the sketch you were a background actor in,” he wrote back with a smiling face emoji.
Per Entertainment Weekly, Best appeared in a 2019 sketch, “Fashion Coward,” starring Emma Stone, Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant.
Yang and Gillis became SNL cast members at the same time in 2019. But Gillis was famously fired just a week later after controversial videos resurfaced that showed him performing racially offensive jokes.
In a profile with The New Yorker, Yang revealed that Gillis reached out to him and “apologized for the mess” before his firing was announced.
“I ended the call by saying, ‘I guess I’ll just see you at work,’” Yang recalled. “He laughed and said, ‘Sure,’ and hung up. Then they announced that he was fired.”
Yang has also expressed wanting to move past the controversy. “I think he and I have done enough things in our careers now to really not [have] that be the definitive beginning or the thing that casts a pall over everything else that we do going forward,” he told Variety in 2024.
Despite his public falling out with the show, Gillis later hosted the show in February 2024, where they starred alongside each other in the “HR Meeting” sketch and were later seen hugging during the show’s goodbyes.
Gillis is now set to return once again to host March 1, with Tate McRae performing.
Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays at 11:30/10:30c on NBC and Peacock.
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