Several Asian American groups gathered in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles Thursday afternoon to call for comedian Shane Gillis to apologize for using “offensive racial remarks” in his stand-up performances.
Leaders of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, Chinese American Citizens Alliance Los Angeles and the Greater Los Angeles Japanese American Citizens League gathered at the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Lodge for a press conference, in which the groups also implored Netflix to cancel Gillis’ new sitcom “Tires” and that Bud Light cut all promotional funding toward his comedy tour unless an apology is issued.
Netflix and Anheuser-Busch did not respond to NBC’s request for comment in time for publication.
“For centuries, xenophobic stereotypes and slurs that cast Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners have endangered our communities, as seen most recently in the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes and incidents since 2020,” California House representative Judy Chu said in a statement, delivered at the conference by Mitchell Matsumura, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. “I hope now, after these years of hate and discrimination against our communities, Mr. Gillis has taken the time to reflect upon his past words and actions and will finally apologize to the Asian American community.”
Gillis received criticism in September 2019 after videos of him using slurs resurfaced online. In 2018, his own podcast, “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast,” featured Gillis stating, “Chinatown is f—–g crazy… Let the f—–g ch–s live there.” On the “Real Ass Podcast”, Gillis called then-presidential candidate Andrew Yang a “Jew ch–k.”
At the time, Gillis had been recently announced as a new member of “Saturday Night Live,” but the controversy was followed by him being dropped from the show just four days after the casting. NBC Universal is the parent company to both “SNL” and NBC…
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