Maybe it’s a good thing Shane Gillis was fired by Saturday Night Live before he even got started.
On Saturday, Gillis (Netflix’s Tires) rubbed a whole lot of people the wrong way with several jokes in his SNL monologue — kind of like he did the first two times he hosted. (And also like when he hosted the ESPYs.) The main culprit this past weekend was an observational quip Gillis made about how women dress in the gym.
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long I didn’t know that women just dress like whores now,” Gillis said. “I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe— have you seen it? I’ve seen it. The shorts? Have you seen the shorts? Those neon — they’re like artificial bait colors. The wrinkles go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole. And don’t look, you’re not allowed to look — for real don’t look because they are filming. I’m in the background of like 10 TikToks right now.”
Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek) was among the unamused.
“Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them ‘whores’ misogynists. There’s a difference there. By the way, I’ve seen more men’s nipples at the gym than I’ve ever seen women showing their bodies off,” Levy wrote on Instagram. “But I’m speechless that something like that can exist on live national television. And to be perfectly honest, more men need to be standing up in opposition to it because it’s complacency that has created the environment in which women are sexually assaulted and it’s a ‘conversation’ as opposed to a ‘crime.’”
I’ll leave it to individual opinions as to whether or not Gillis’ joke is offensive and to what degree, but one thing is for sure — it was not built for the SNL audience in 2026.
SNL attracts liberal talent and a similar audience. It films in New York City and its main target is Donald Trump. The show’s writers and cast members are generally a diverse group of Gen Z-ers that came up in improv, sketch and standup comedy. They don’t listen to Joe Rogan — Gillis’ buddy who, along with Theo Von (and Dan Soder, kind of) got a shoutout in the set — and they don’t drink the Bud Light Gillis endorses. Studio 8H is not the place for gay jokes and jokes against women — at the very least, if you try them, they’d better be really strong. Gillis’ were not.
Comedy is about pushing boundaries, and Gillis is really good at that. His substantial, Guinness Book-sized audience is anti-woke, which is actually a pretty logical (though rare) position for comedians. The same material would probably kill with a Gillis crowd, though those probably do not have a ton of crossover with your average SNL viewer.
It wasn’t just the wrong place for the joke — it was decidedly the wrong time. Women wearing what some people consider especially-revealing clothing in the gym is in no way a new observation inside or outside of the comedy community. The “fake bait” line is a good one, but really not enough to justify the bit. Gillis’ “filming” tag makes the concept a bit more timely — self-recording in public gyms really is pervasive and invasive — and Gillis ultimately makes himself the butt of the joke, but the material was still not the best choice for SNL in 2026.
Gillis, of course, knows all of this — he just doesn’t care. That’s his brand. He dropped an F-bomb (since edited out) later in the episode and laughed it off. Two of the three times Gillis has hosted Saturday Night Live he’s worn just a black t-shirt for the monologue (and the middle time he work a black jacket over a black t-shirt). Gillis is a casual dude (emphasis on the “dude”) who does not conform to your social norms and wants everyone to know it. He’s a blue-collar guy who allows you to assume he votes red — that is, until Gillis finally cleared that air (a bit) on Rogan’s podcast.
SNL knew exactly what it was getting by booking Gillis. For starters, it had already seen this show twice. In his first hosting stint, Gillis joked about being his mom’s “gay best friend” before discovering masturbation, and looking like he has “family members with Down syndrome.” (There again though, the first joke was about himself and the second preceded expressing love for a niece with the genetic condition.)
Gillis’ second swing compared liberals to the Sith from Star Wars, which didn’t work with the audience seated directly in front of him. (Everybody believes they’re the Jedi Order.) And oh yeah, SNL had already hired and fired Gillis as a cast member (all within six weeks) after old podcast jokes in which he used racial and homophobic language were resurfaced.
His third time definitely was not the charm, but keep in mind that Gillis did (basically) the exact same monologue hours earlier at dress rehearsal. The show (and NBC’s censors) knew what was coming — Gillis has done the gym bit before, THR is told — and is currently benefiting from the attention: Gillis’ latest monologue currently has 1.2 million views on SNL‘s YouTube. (The F-bomb sketch has even more.)
SNL creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels seems to court controversial hosts. Trump infamously hosted SNL during his 2016 president campaign. The prior season, two years before being “canceled” for masturbating in front of female comics without their consent, host Louis CK joked about child molesters loving their crimes. In 2022, Dave Chappelle joked about Kanye West’s antisemitic rants of the time and referenced Jewish power in Hollywood. The Chappelle monologue is no longer on SNL‘s official YouTube channel, but Louis’ and Shane’s are (in full).