Bowen Yang has once again found himself dragged into the controversy surrounding Shane Gillis‘ 2019 firing from Saturday Night Live.
The SNL breakout star responded to a disgruntled commenter’s statement on social media after Michelle Best, whom Yang identified as a background actor who appeared on SNL, claimed Yang was at fault for Gillis’ firing.
“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,” Best commented on a recent Instagram post from SNL. “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 personally responded to Best’s statement with a brief comment. Though he did not acknowledge Best’s defense of Gillis, he shut down the rumors that he “bitched” the comedian off of 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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