“Saturday Night Live” alum Dana Carvey didn’t get all the controversy over Shane Gillis‘ recent monologue on the sketch show, saying he “just saw it” as “a joke.”
Gillis sparked outrage on Oct. 10 when he opened his “SNL” hosting stint by mocking women at the gym. “I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now?” Gillis said. “You’ve seen the shorts? They’re those neon, like, artificial bait-colored [shorts], and the wrinkles go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole. And don’t look! You’re not allowed to look.”
Speaking about the backlash on his “Fly on the Wall” podcast with David Spade, Carvey said: “I just didn’t understand the kerfuffle only because, to me, I just saw it as what we call — I’ll just say it — a joke.”
He continued, “Like, when you say jokes, you’re not literally saying women are whores. You are literally joking. Isn’t that kind of the idea? No? Did I just get canceled?”
Carvey, who was on “SNL” for seven seasons from 1986 to 1993, added that Gillis’ joke probably “destroyed” in the “10 comedy clubs he played that week,” but acknowledged that “SNL” was maybe “not the right place.”
Spade interjected and said, “Listen, it got some laughs. I think he knows that one’s going to be a button-pusher, but he doesn’t care.”
Spade concluded that on “SNL,” “if something kills, it gets a pass. If something totally bombs, then they get in a lot of trouble.”
Several comedy stars have spoken out against Gillis’ joke, including “Schitt’s Creek” star Dan Levy and ex “SNL” player Ego Nwodim.
“Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists,” Levy said in an Instagram Reel. “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.’”
Watch the latest episode of “Fly on the Wall” below.