Shane Gillis
Shane Gillis, the Pennsylvania comic fired by SNL in 2019, on his Philadelphia start, Netflix's Tires, a stadium record and his three turns hosting the show.
Photo: Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized and converted to WebP.
Mechanicsburg, West Point and West Chester
Shane Gillis grew up in Mechanicsburg, in central Pennsylvania, where he played football. His father sold food-packaging equipment and kept George Carlin CDs around the house. Gillis has said his father watches Fox News, a detail he told The New Yorker for its 2022 profile.
Football took him out of town after high school. He was recruited to play at West Point, then transferred to Elon University in North Carolina, and finally finished a history degree at West Chester University, outside Philadelphia. The New Yorker reported he was thirty-four in September 2022, and the Philadelphia Inquirer gave his age as 37 in November 2025.
Comedy was not the first job. He sold Hondas and spent six months teaching English in Spain. While at West Chester he started doing stand-up at a local bar.
Philly's Phunniest at Helium Comedy Club
Gillis lived in Mantua, a neighborhood in West Philadelphia. In the summer of 2016 he won Philly's Phunniest, a competition at Helium Comedy Club. He was later named a New Face at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal and an Up-Next comic at Comedy Central's 2019 Clusterfest.
The New Yorker recounts a set from election night, November 8, 2016, when he told a stunned crowd, "We're back, dudes! White dudes are back."
In Philadelphia he also met Matt McCusker, another local comic. The two started Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast as an informal show.
Four Days in the Saturday Night Live Cast
On Thursday, September 12, 2019, Saturday Night Live announced three new cast members: Chloe Fineman, Bowen Yang and Gillis. Then podcast recordings surfaced in which he used racist and homophobic language. Four days later the show let him go.
The statement from SNL said: "we were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable." Before the firing, in a response reported by the Inquirer, Gillis called himself "a comedian who pushes boundaries. I sometimes miss." He added that he would be "happy to apologize to anyone who's actually offended."
He was let go before appearing in a single episode.
Live in Austin on YouTube
Gillis paid for his next special himself. Shane Gillis: Live in Austin came out in 2021 and was posted free on YouTube. By September 2022 it had been viewed nearly seven million times, according to The New Yorker. Deadline put the count above 23 million in February 2024.
During the pandemic he and John McKeever also made Gilly and Keeves, a sketch series they funded themselves and released online. One sketch, "Trump Speed Dating," passed two million views. In the same New Yorker piece, Gillis talked about how he looks on screen: "You see a guy like me on TV, he's usually doing something pretty bad."
Beautiful Dogs and Tires on Netflix
Netflix released Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs in 2023. The special reached the Netflix Top 10 in five countries and stayed in the US Top 10 for two weeks.
In February 2024 Netflix ordered Tires, a scripted series. Gillis stars in it and is a writer, co-creator and executive producer alongside Steven Gerben and John McKeever, who directs. The show comes through Dad Sick Productions, the company Gillis runs with McKeever. The first season, six episodes, premiered on May 23, 2024.
Netflix renewed Tires for a third season in July 2025. In February 2026 the Inquirer reported that Pennsylvania had approved a $6 million tax credit for the third season to film in West Chester. The credit is a state incentive for the production's spending in Pennsylvania, not a payment to Gillis.
Back in Studio 8H
On February 24, 2024, Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live, the show that had fired him four and a half years earlier. He brought up the firing in his monologue. Around the same time Deadline reported the Tires order, and the Inquirer reported that Netflix had also signed him for another stand-up special.
73,946 People at Lincoln Financial Field
On July 17, 2026, Gillis played Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia with a lineup of guests. The Inquirer had announced the show the previous November. Variety reported that 76,212 tickets were sold, a figure checked by a Guinness World Records adjudicator, while the stadium and The Hollywood Reporter gave 77,047 tickets. Both outlets agree on attendance: 73,946 people, more than the 67,733 that Mario Barth drew in Berlin in 2008. The night earned him two Guinness titles.
The stadium show capped a long run on the road. Variety counted more than 100 headline shows over two years, more than 1 million tickets sold and 34 venue records, including more tickets than any other event in the history of Scotiabank Arena. He also hosted Netflix's Roast of Kevin Hart.
A Third Monologue in October 2026
Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live for the third time on the weekend of October 10 and 11, 2026, with Rosalia as the musical guest. His opening monologue drew criticism for misogyny, including from Dan Levy and Jessica Valenti, the Inquirer reported. In a Dr. Seuss sketch later in the episode, an f-bomb made it to air, and an apology followed.
Seven years after the 2019 firing, the show had now booked him as host three times.
Sources
- Shane Gillis's Fall and Rise | The New Yorker
- New SNL cast member Shane Gillis, a Pennsylvania native, responds to outrage over past racist, homophobic comments
- 'SNL' Fires Comedian Shane Gillis For Racist Remarks : NPR
- Comedian and honorary Philadelphian Shane Gillis lands a new Netflix show and comedy special
- Netflix Orders Shane Gillis Scripted Series 'Tires'
- Shane Gillis' 'Tires' has received a $6 million tax credit to film its third season in West Chester
- Shane Gillis will perform at the Linc next summer
- Shane Gillis Breaks Guinness World Record for Tickets Sold
- Why Shane Gillis Will Remain Victor in Comedy Guinness Record Race
- Shane Gillis criticized for misogyny on 'Saturday Night Live' appearance
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