Saturday Night Live announced Shane Gillis as the upcoming host of the episode to be aired on February 24, 2024. 21 Savage will be joining the stage as the episode’s musical guest.

However, taking Gillis onboard for the show is a rather controversial move, as the comedian was cast and rather swiftly cut off from the late-night comedic program back in 2019.

Back in 2019, just hours after Gillis was announced to be a part of Saturday Night Live or SNL, videos of him making racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and misogynistic jokes on his own podcast and other media went viral on all social media platforms.

According to Variety, a week later, a spokesperson, on behalf of executive producer Lorne Michaels said, “After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL.”

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“We want SNL to have a variety of voices and points of view within the show, and we hired Shane on the strength of his talent as comedian and his impressive audition for SNL. We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days," the statement further added.

"The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard,” the spokesperson concluded as they revealed that NBC had decided to cut the comedian off from the show.

The 36-year-old radio personality responded to the decision, saying, “It feels ridiculous for comedians to be making serious public statements but here we are. I’m a comedian who was funny enough to get SNL.”

“That can’t be taken away. Of course I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL, but I understand it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made. I’m honestly grateful for the opportunity. I was always a mad tv [sic] guy anyway,” he added.