For all the comedians and actors who have come and gone from “Saturday Night Live” in its four decades, there has been a near-complete absence of Asian performers onscreen.

The NBC show is taking a step toward rectifying that. Bowen Yang — the son of Chinese immigrants and an “S.N.L.” writer — will be one of three new cast members for the 45th season, which begins this month, the show announced on Thursday.

Yang’s admission to the cast was a breakthrough — he will be the show’s first Chinese-American regular performer — but just hours later, the show was confronted with the embarrassing revelation that another new cast member, Shane Gillis, had made racist jokes about Chinese people in a podcast. Representatives of the show and Gillis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[Update: “Saturday Night Live” dropped Shane Gillis from its cast]

“S.N.L.” has had little representation from Asian actors, as cast members or hosts, in the past. Fred Armisen, who appeared on the show from 2002 through 2013, is of Asian descent; another former star, Rob Schneider, is one-quarter Filipino; and Nasim Pedrad, who was in the cast from 2009 to 2014, was born in Iran.