SNL star Bowen Yang responds to claim he got Shane Gillis fired

Bowen Yang is shutting down unsubstantiated claims he was responsible for Shane Gillis’s Saturday Night Live firing.

Under a recent Instagram post from the show promoting Gillis’ second stint as host this weekend, Michelle Best, who appears to have worked as a background actor on SNL, called Gillis a “bigger man to come host after being unfairly ditched” and alleged that Yang, whom she referred to as a “whiny queen,” had “bitched him off the show.”

“SNL fired him as a hater. He’s not. He’s very kind and has smart humor and stands up to bullying,” wrote Best. “Good for him!”

Yang himself caught wind of the hateful comment and replied to Best, disputing his involvement in Gillis’ firing, while also noting he “wrote the sketch you were a background actor in.”

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Entertainment Weekly has reached out to reps for SNL for comment about the nature of Best’s work on the show.

It appears Best did appear in a 2019 sketch, “Fashion Coward,” with host Emma Stone. Also starring Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, the sketch acts as a faux commercial for a clothing store that sells bland clothing for women.

Yang joined the venerable sketch comedy in 2018 as a writer and was promoted to featured player the following year, making history in the process as the first Chinese-American cast member and one of only a handful of out gay stars on the show. Gillis (along with Chloe Fineman) was among the roster of newly-added cast members that same season, but was dropped after he came under fire for resurfaced racist and homophobic jokes.

Gillis apologized for the past remarks, calling himself a “comedian who pushes boundaries” and “sometimes misses” the mark. He would later return to host a February 2024 episode, and has since been tapped for a second stint on March 1. As for Gillis’ initial firing, SNL architect Lorne Michaels previously said the decision did not stem from him but the folks at the top, sharing that the was “angry” over Gillis’ departure.

“That was very strong from the people in charge. And obviously I was not on that side, but I understood it,” Michaels told The Wall Street Journal last year. “He said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world. I was angry. I thought, You haven’t seen what we’re going to do, and what I’m going to try to bring out in him, because I thought he was the real thing.”

The Wicked star, who previously shared that Gillis’ called him personally to apologize for the entire ordeal at the time, has spoken frankly about wanting to move past it all. “Anytime our names are in the same sentence, at least in a journalistic way, it always feels deleterious,” Yang told Variety last summer. “It feels like one person is trying to undo the other. I was just really curious about what that show would be like and if it would be an opportunity to really move past it.”

He added, “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.”

Yang is now in his sixth season as an SNL cast member, scoring three Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy nominations (plus another for writing) for his work. He’s become a breakout star on the sketch show thanks to his imaginative “Weekend Update” characters, like the Iceberg That Sank the Titanic, Moo Deng, A Proud Gay Oompa Loompa, and Trend Forecasters with Aidy Bryant, in addition to impressions of Fran Lebowitz, JD Vance, and Charli XCX.

SNL’s season 50 continues with Gillis and musical guest Tate McRae this Saturday at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.