Culture
Third Time in 8H, Shane Gillis Hosts SNL With Rosalía
Seven years after NBC cut him loose before his first episode, the Pennsylvania comic returns to Rockefeller Center as a three-time host
Saturday night, 11:30, Rockefeller Center. The band vamps, the cameras find the stage in Studio 8H, and a big man from central Pennsylvania walks out to deliver a monologue in the building that once fired him before he ever made it to air.
Shane Gillis hosts Saturday Night Live on October 10. It is his third time in the job. Rosalía is the musical guest, her second turn on the show. The episode closes a run of three straight weeks of new shows, and then the program goes dark for two weeks before a Halloween episode on October 31, according to TheWrap's report on the season's first hosts.
The week has already started on a joke at his expense. In filmed midweek promos, featured player Veronika Slowikowska awkwardly pitches herself for a part on his Netflix sitcom Tires and says she really needs pickles, while Gillis defends being kind of famous and gets mildly mocked for it, as Bleeding Cool described the clips.
The Five Days in 2019
The humbling is a running bit by now, and the history explains why. In September 2019, NBC announced Gillis as a new featured player alongside Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman. The same day, clips surfaced from a 2018 episode of his podcast in which he used an ethnic slur for Chinese people while joking about Chinatown. Four days later, a spokesperson for Lorne Michaels said Gillis was off the cast. Gillis later maintained that the clips had been taken out of context. In 2024, Michaels told The Wall Street Journal that the push to fire him had come from above. "That was very strong from the people in charge. And obviously I was not on that side, but I understood it," he said, as The Independent reported.
He never appeared in an episode. He left New York for Austin in 2023, citing the city's growing stand-up scene around Joe Rogan's Comedy Mothership, and kept working.
The comeback ran through the same stage. Gillis first hosted on February 24, 2024, nearly four and a half years after the firing, to mixed reviews. He hosted a second time on March 1, 2025, and played a man advertising CouplaBeers, a fake medication for anxiety and depression, with Heidi Gardner as his wife. The New York Post reported that one fan online called the sketch a contender for "the best SNL skit in the last 20 years."
A Stadium Comic in a Small Room
The man walking into 8H this weekend is a different size of star. On July 17, Gillis played Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, home of the Eagles, and set a Guinness World Record for the largest audience for a comedian, with 73,946 people counted inside the stadium. The old mark belonged to Mario Barth, who drew 67,733 to Berlin's Olympiastadion in 2008, Variety reported. Variety also reported that across more than 100 headline shows over two years he has sold more than a million tickets.
That is the charm of this weekend. A comedian who now fills football stadiums has to land a monologue and a night of live sketches in front of a studio audience that is a sliver of that crowd, with the show going out live on NBC and Peacock.
The rest of his week looks crowded too. On Monday, the Golden Globes released a list of 30 podcasts eligible for its best podcast award, and Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, his long-running show with Matt McCusker, made the list for the first time, Deadline reported. So did Las Culturistas, co-hosted by Bowen Yang, who was announced as a cast member the same September day in 2019. Fineman, the third name from that announcement, departed during the offseason after seven seasons, according to Variety.
Rosalía and the October Break
Rosalía comes to the show after closing out her Lux world tour, which Variety said wraps the month before her return to 8H. Her presence gives the night a second center of gravity, and a sharp contrast in tone with a host whose act is built on stand-up rather than spectacle.
The fall lineup has leaned local. The season opened on September 26 with Knicks captain Jalen Brunson, fresh from leading the Knicks to their first NBA title in 53 years, in a night Suite 646 covered as a victory lap at Rockefeller Plaza. Dakota Johnson followed on October 3 with Turnstile. After Gillis and Rosalía, the show takes its two-week break until Inde Navarrette hosts the Halloween episode with Gracie Abrams.
Gillis broke a stadium record in July. On Saturday he only has to win over a studio.
Gillis broke a stadium record in July. On Saturday he only has to win over a studio. For a comic who was shown the door here before he could tell a single joke on air, that may be the harder room, and the better story.