A comedian named on Thursday as one of the newest “Saturday Night Live” cast members made racist remarks mocking Chinese people and used a racial slur in a podcast episode last year.

The comments were uncovered by a comedy journalist several hours after NBC announced that the comedian, Shane Gillis, 31, would be joining the cast along with two other performers, one of them the show’s first Chinese-American player.

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

In the episode, which was also recorded on video and uploaded to YouTube a year ago, Gillis, a stand-up comedian in New York, and his podcast partner, Matt McCusker, mimicked caricatures of Chinese accents. During their conversation, which was often vulgar, Gillis also called it a “hassle” to try to speak with a waiter in a Chinese restaurant and made other offensive remarks, including a slur referring to Chinese people.