Dan Levy rips Shane Gillis’ misogynist ‘SNL’ opener: ‘I’m speechless’

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Dan Levy is taking aim at Shane Gillis’ controversial Saturday Night Live monologue, in which the comedian referred to women dressing like “whores” at the gym.

“I try to go to a public gym. Going to a public gym as a fat guy, especially in New York, is a nightmare. It’s just the hottest gay guys you’ve ever seen … Also, I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now?” Gillis said during his opener.

“Look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe [it]. Have you seen it? I’ve seen it. You’ve seen the shorts? They’re those neon, like, artificial bait-coloured [shorts], and 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 10 TikToks right now.”

It was Gillis’ third time hosting after he was fired as a cast member before the Season 45 premiere in 2019 for mocking Asians and using anti-gay slurs on Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast, which he co-hosted with comedian Matt McCusker.

In apologizing in a now-deleted tweet, Gillis referred to himself as a “comedian who pushes boundaries.”

During his opening set Saturday night, Gillis went on to refer to his siblings as “two big, fat-bitch sisters” and riffed on his “Adolf Hitler haircut.”

“I give a lot of speeches and the front falls down a lot, and there’s no way to adjust it without looking exactly like [Hitler]. It’s the only way. I’m not going to [brush it to the side], that’s gay. That’s it: You’re either gay or you’re Hitler, and isn’t that where we’re at as a country?” he joked.

‘More men need to be standing up’

On social media, Gillis was accused of taking “cheap shots at women,” and Levy blasted the comedian’s monologue.

“Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists,” Levy said in a self-shot video posted to Instagram. “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 continued, “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.'”

The Schitt’s Creek alum stressed that “men need to be defending women more.”

“This is not a women’s issue, this is an everybody issue. Because the more that men objectify women in the media, the more that other men see them as objects and treat them as objects,” he concluded. “They are not objects. They are superior human beings to men, OK? And I’m sorry if this gets me in trouble with the Internet, but f***.”

Levy’s scathing review has been viewed more than 8.5 million times and generated more than a million likes.

Plenty of celebrities supported Levy’s stance in the comments, with Elizabeth Banks writing “Nailed it” and Hannah Einbinder adding, “Thank you.”

“It was absolutely the most unfunny thing,” another follower added.

Gillis’ jokes about women weren’t the only controversial thing to happen Saturday night. The funnyman also dropped an F-bomb during a Dr. Seuss-inspired sketch.

He later apologized for the mishap.

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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