"Saturday Night Live" who?Benjamin Ashford Shane Gillis will be live from a city near you on his latest stand-up tour.
The comedian, who was famously fired from "SNL" in 2019 over resurfaced offensive podcast comments, on Tuesday announced his "biggest tour yet," which will take him to 27 cities around the world.
The tour kicks off Jan. 10 with a stop in San Antonio, Texas, before Gillis heads to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Seattle, and more locations. The last scheduled date is in San Jose, California, at the end of June.
The announcement comes after Gillis in February returned as host of "Saturday Night Live," the same show that fired him five years earlier. The comedian's hiring had sparked controversy after podcast comments resurfaced where he used an anti-Asian slur.
Gillis has since continued to generate controversy with some of his comedy that critics have deemed offensive, including his "SNL" monologue where he joked about having family members with Down syndrome and said, "You remember when you were a little boy and you loved your mom? You remember when you were gay?"
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At the time, Vox's Aja Romano said that Gillis had continued to engage in "racist, anti-trans, anti-gay, antisemitic, and arguably white supremacist statements" in the years since his firing, and Pajiba's Dustin Rowles criticized Gillis' "dehumanizing" act as "mean" and "straight out of 1994." In a 2019 statement, Gillis described himself as a "comedian who pushes boundaries."
Gillis also addressed his firing in his February monologue, telling viewers that he "probably shouldn't be up here, honestly."
"I was actually fired from this show a while ago, but don't look that up, please," he said. "If you don't know who I am, please, don't Google that. It's fine. Don't even worry about it."
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But the 2019 controversy did not derail Gillis' career, and he has since been enjoying success with his tours and comedy specials like 2023's "Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs." He also co-created and starred in the Netflix series "Tires," which hit the service in May and has been renewed for a second season.
Last month, "SNL" creator Lorne Michaels revealed he didn't approve of Gillis' firing.
SNL' host Shane Gillisaddresses being fired as a cast member: 'Don't look that up'
"He said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world," he told The Wall Street Journal. "I was angry. I thought, '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.'"
An artist presale for Gillis' tour will begin on Wednesday at 10 a.m. local time, while a local venue presale will begin on Thursday at 10 a.m. ET, and the general on sale begins on Friday at 10 a.m. local time.
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