Michael Che has been preparing for potential questions about Shane Gillis’ controversial monologue on Saturday Night Live last weekend, and the moment has arrived.
“I gotta do more press this week to promote the special. Wonder what every fucking question’s gonna be about,” Che wrote on his Instagram earlier this week, regarding the press tour for his new Netflix stand-up special, Michael Che: Shot in Minnesota. “Thanks a lot Shane.”
For context, after hosting the NBC sketch comedy program on Saturday, Gillis drew heat over his joke about women working out.
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now,” Gillis said to the live audience. “Look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe [it]. Have you seen it? I’ve seen it. The shorts? Have you seen the shorts? They’re neon, like, artificial bait-colored? 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 like 10 TikToks right now.”
Despite being adamant about not being interested in weighing in on the discourse, Che, who anchors “Weekend Update” with Colin Jost on SNL, was asked on the Today show Thursday about the controversy.
“That’s comedy,” he said. “It’s like, you think it’s funny and some people don’t.”
He was later asked if he laughed at Gillis’ joke about women, to which Che replied, “I was at cue cards actually, thinking about what I was gonna say that was gonna make people upset. I didn’t even see it until the next day.”
Che isn’t a stranger to controversial jokes, especially during his bi-annual joke swap with Jost on SNL, where the jokes can get quite dicey.
“That’s why I can’t criticize anybody for swinging and missing because I’ve definitely swung and missed too,” the comedian said on Today. “I try to keep that heat off of me.”
After drawing some backlash for his remarks on the NBC morning program, Che responded to a fan on Instagram who asked why he had no problem calling Kanye “Ye” West out in the past, but not Gillis.
“That’s a fair question. Especially since when I called Kanye out, I did so privately. I had no idea he was filming. Point being, when I have a problem with someone I address them in person. Not thru the media. I’m not gonna drag someone on the Today show, when I can just text them. It’s a courtesy that’s been extended to me in the past, and I like to pay that forward.”
Following Gillis’ monologue, Dan Levy was among some celebrities who slammed the comedian over his joke about women at the gym. “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,” the Schitt’s Creek co-creator and star wrote in part.
Levy added in his Instagram post, “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.’”
Former SNL castmember Ego Nwodim also responded with a photo of herself at the gym with the caption, “Whore reporting for duty.”