A Very Good Thing That Came Out of the Saturday Night Live Hiring Scandal
This is Galaxy Brain, a column that unpacks all things extremely online.
For the past four days, I’ve been wandering around my apartment muttering “who invented that?” If you or your loved ones have been suffering from the same affliction, let me explain.
The seed was planted on Thursday, when Saturday Night Live announced its newest slate of hires. They included Bowen Yang—a writer for the show and their first Chinese-American cast member—Chloe Fineman, and Shane Gillis. Within hours, reporter Seth Simons posted a clip of Gillis and Matt McClusker, co-hosts of Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, riffing back-and-forth with racist remarks about eating in Chinatown. In the fall of 2018!
After that clip went viral and the public wondered about the apparent flimsiness of SNL’s vetting process, Gillis released a classic Notes app non-apology. Two writer-performers named Jeremy Levick (best known in my brain for his Tag interview audition tape) and Rajat Suresh released something much better: a parody video of Gillis's podcast in which Levick pleaded “SNL must not hire Rajat.” Watch the Gillis clip, then immediately cleanse your mind with this clip:
SNL announced on Monday that they had fired Gillis over the weekend, which means that there’s only one sensible thing to do at this point: hire Rajat.
"I should be hired on SNL because i have this killer character called ‘Dumb Einstein’ and it actually kinda slaps,” Suresh said when GQ reached out to ask him to make his case. “Imagine Einstein if he was stupid instead of a genius."
"What Rajat said is definitely messed up but I changed my mind about him being on SNL after he showed me his hilarious new character,” Levick added. “It's called ‘Dumb Einstein’ and it's essentially Albert Einstein, but he's not smart—he's stupid.”
Originally Appeared on GQ
