Shane Gillis

Gillis began performing comedy in 2012.[12] He regularly performed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.[10] To further his career, he relocated to Philadelphia. In 2015, he placed third at Helium Comedy Club's annual "Philly's Phunniest" tournament,[13] and he won the tournament the next year.[14] Shane has named among his biggest stand-up influences as Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Norm Macdonald, Patrice O'Neal, and Bill Burr.[15]

In 2016, Gillis began Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast with Matt McCusker. In 2017, Gillis became a frequent guest on The Bonfire with Big Jay Oakerson and Dan Soder, increasing his popularity. He also began a weekly show on Compound Media called A Fair One with Tommy Pope.

In 2019, Comedy Central named Gillis an "Up Next" comedian as he performed at Comedy Central's Clusterfest.[16] That same year, Gillis was recognized as a "New Face" at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.[17][18] During an interview for All Things Considered at that festival, Gillis was interrupted by stand-up comedian Robert Kelly, who said, "You're very funny, dude ... I mean, I wanted to hate it."[19] The interviewer, Andrew Limbong, described Gillis' set at the festival, writing: "Shane Gillis gives off post-jock energy—like someone who used to play a sport in school, then had the self-awareness to realize he wasn't cut out for it and stopped—but he isn't bitter about it at all. His friendly demeanor distracts you, while he sneaks in just a whiff of social insight within a barrage of self-deprecating sex jokes."[20]

Gillis's addition to Saturday Night Live as a featured cast member was announced on September 12, 2019, along with Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman.[21][22]

Later that day, however, several clips of a 2018 episode of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, which have since been removed from YouTube, resurfaced, in which Gillis made jokes that included the word Chink, an ethnic slur about people of Asian descent.[9][23][24] In other clips, Gillis and co-host Matt McCusker ranked comedians by race, gender, and sexual orientation, which included the use of gay slurs.[23] Later that night, Gillis posted a tweet saying that "I'm a comedian who pushes boundaries" and that "if you go through my 10 years of comedy, most of it bad, you're going to find a lot of bad misses. I'm happy to apologize to anyone who's actually offended by anything I've said."[25] Four days later, a spokesperson for Lorne Michaels, the creator of the show, announced that Gillis had been removed from the cast.[6]

Afterwards, Gillis maintained that while the clips looked bad, they were taken out of context and he was misquoted in the majority of articles reporting the story. Gillis also stated that he immediately regretted using the "I'm a comedian who pushes boundaries" statement, blaming it on having "literally 5 minutes of being pressured to write anything", acknowledging the statement was "corny" and that he officially retracted the statement.[26][27]

In January 2020, Gillis was named "2019's Stand-Up Comedian of the Year" in Theinterrobang's Sixth Annual Comedy Awards.[28]

In December 2020, Shane and comedian John McKeever launched the web series Gilly and Keeves, featuring comedy sketches starring Gillis and McKeever such as "ISIS Toyota", "Uncle Daycare", and "Trump Speed Dating".[29]

On September 7, 2021, Gillis released his first live comedy special, Shane Gillis: Live in Austin on YouTube. Comedy website The Laugh Button ranked Shane's special in second place in their top 20 comedy specials of 2021.[30]

Gillis made two appearances in 2021 on The Joe Rogan Experience, during his second JRE appearance he made alongside comics Mark Normand and Ari Shaffir, the three comics began trading their favorite Louis CK stories, where Shane revealed he had just gotten back from being on the road with CK, where he was his opener for CK's 2021 stand-up tour.[31]