Comedian Shane Gillis has announced a 27-city arena tour as he enjoys his thunderous comeback – after unearthed jokes nearly derailed his career.

Gillis, 36, made the headlines in 2019 when he was hired to join the cast of Saturday Night Live, only to be fired over resurfaced podcast clips of his politically incorrect comic bits, including one in which he used the ethnic slur ‘c***k.’

He was defended by legendary Saturday Night Live alum Norm Macdonald, who himself was fired from the show in the 1990s for his OJ Simpson material.

In recent years Gillis has catapulted back to showbiz success, and in 2023 he released a stand-up special that made the Netflix Top 10 in five countries.

Now, in his latest coup, Gillis is embarking on a tour that will take him to nearly 30 cities in North America and Europe, including London and Dublin.

Shane Gillis has announced a 27-city arena tour as he enjoys his thunderous comeback – after unearthed jokes nearly derailed his career; pictured November 2023

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Enтιтled Shane Gillis Live, the international tour will begin January 10, 2025 at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas, an arena that seats 19,000.

He will whirl through a string of American cities including Dallas, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Tampa, Salt Lake City, Washington DC, Omaha and San Diego.

The tour will also take him abroad, including to Vancouver and to London’s mᴀssive arena The O2, which has an audience capacity of 20,000.

Gillis found himself at the center of a roiling media furor in 2019 when he was hired for Saturday Night Live and then fired over controversial jokes on Matt And Shane’s Secret Podcast, which he co-hosted with Matt McClusker.

The bit that drew the most attention involved his making fun of Chinese accents and using the ethnic slur ‘c***k’ for Chinese people.

Inasmuch as Gillis was hired at the same time as Bowen Yang, the first Saturday Night Live cast member of Asian descent, the jokes pulled even further focus.  

Gillis issued a statement noting he is a ‘comedian who pushes boundaries,’ while offering to ‘to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.’

Norm Macdonald tweeted his sympathies to Gillis, writing that the firing was ‘Unacceptable’ and telling him: ‘Please DM me, pal, when you have a moment.’

Gillis, 36, made national headlines in 2019 when he was hired to join the cast of Saturday Night Live , only to be fired over resurfaced podcast clips; pictured November 2023

In a full circle moment, Saturday Night Live invited Gillis back on this year to host the program, which he did in an episode that aired February 24 (pictured)

In 1997, an NBC executive who was friends with OJ Simpson fired Macdonald from Saturday Night Live for making fun of the ex-football player over his murder trial. 

Ultimately, the surge of public notoriety turned to Gillis’ advantage, as he made multiple appearances on The Joe Rogan Experience and his first stand-up special earned more than 30 million views on YouTube. 

His second stand-up special, Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs, was released last year on Netflix and enjoyed a two-week run in the streamer’s U.S. Top 10. 

In a full circle moment, Saturday Night Live invited Gillis back on this year to host the program, which he did in an episode that aired February 24.

Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels has now insisted that the decision to fire Gillis was made not by him, but by the network.

‘He said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world,’ Michaels said in a recent interview with 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.”‘