"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," Michaels remembered thinking.

In a Wall Street Journal feature about the landmark 50th season of sketch comedy institution “Saturday Night Live,” executive producer Lorne Michaels reflects on the 2019 firing of Shane Gillis, and he’s not happy about how it went down.

In 2019, Saturday Night Live made headlines after firing Shane Gillis before he was ever able to step on stage. He was ultimately let go after jokes he made on a podcast that included racial and homophobic slurs resurfaced and went viral.