Shane Gillis Hated ‘Hot Ones,’ Says the Show Cut Out His Most Awful Jokes
Shane Gillis recently revealed that the reason his Hot Ones episode was so boring is because he hated doing the show, and he told offensive jokes that he knew couldn’t make it into the final cut. Is it possible that he got himself fired from Saturday Night Live on purpose?
As the most notable entertainment-newsworthy incident of his career clearly demonstrated, Gillis’ sense of humor is not one that plays well on the industry’s most mainstream platforms. Even when Lorne Michaels invited the Pennsylvania stand-up to host SNL back in February, almost five years after the comic’s infamous hired-to-fired speedrun, Gillis was visibly uncomfortable performing on a live sketch show where he couldn’t punctuate each scene with some variation of the punchline “you’re gay.”
Despite his success in stand-up, every one of Gillis’ attempts to reach a broader audience who might bristle at the low-hanging-fruit-style comedy that made him a Manosphere darling has been awkward, ineffectual and, above all else, unfunny — both to Gillis’ base and to the general public.
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Last week, Gillis appeared on the popular internet talk show Hot Ones in the shortest interview Sean Evans has put out in almost a year. Though the episode exploded to almost five million views as Gillis’ fans flooded in to see their favorite comic sweat, most came away unimpressed by the stilted, quiet and cold conversation.
On a recent episode of Gillis’ own show, Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, Gillis insulted Evans’ interviewing skills and griped about having an awful experience on Hot Ones, noting how the producers were unhappy with his deliberately racist jokes and cut them out of the episode. Most guests just complain that the wings are too hot.
“He was very serious,” Gillis said of Evans, “I was uncomfortable. … He was asking genuine questions, like, ‘So when you come up with your bits, it seems to me like, the first bit is the hardest. What do you think about that?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, for sure.’”
Apparently unfamiliar with the basic premise of an interview, Gillis decided to tank his Hot Ones episode for his own amusement. “All I could do was lash out and say the worst things I could and they edited all that out,” Gillis explained. “They were like, ‘What are the hardest rooms?’ And I was like, ‘Black people.’”
With a laugh, Gillis continued, “In between me bombing, every single question on there was one second long because I bombed.” Gillis told his co-host Matt McCusker of the uncomfortable atmosphere, “There’s people filming like from me to you. They’re all right here, so I’m sitting at the table, there’s people clearly disapproving of what I was saying.”
However, Gillis caveated, “They were laughing at a couple things. Everybody was very nice, I was just nervous.”
McCusker said of Evans, “It is apparent when, like, someone’s never been called gay their entire life, and they can be like, ‘So man, if you just wanted to like open up?’ And you’re like, ‘Oh stop dude.’”
Gillis further mocked the Hot Ones host, “He’s like, ‘Some guys open their special by pensively smoking a cigarette.’ It took everything in me not to just be like, ‘Pensive?!'”
But instead of roasting his host, Gillis just mumbled half-answers and racist one-liners while starring in the most uneventful Hot Ones episode in ages. He sure showed Evans.
