The biggest surprise about Shane Gillis’ controversial “Saturday Night Live” monologue last week, if you’re someone who watches the show consistently, is how unsurprising it was.
An uproar has emerged about the comedian’s stand-up style monologue, in which he said he hit his “fat rock bottom,” comparing his appearance in a beer commercial to that of a lesbian. Then he discussed going to the gym for the first time in a long time and described the way women dress there like this: “I didn’t know women just dressed like w— now.”
But if you’d already watched Gillis’ previous appearances — in 2024 and 2025 — the style of the jokes was familiar. You had to expect a queasy mix of homophobia and misogyny, if not jokes that were racist or at the expense of people with Down syndrome, as in his previous monologues.
That’s part of the reason Gillis was fired from “SNL” in the first place shortly after being brought on as a cast member in 2019: Gillis’ social media posts resurfaced with racist slurs, including one aimed at Chinese people.
Now, the most recent monologue has drawn criticism from not just media pundits and social media influencers, but also celebrities, including Dan Levy, and more significantly, from people within the “SNL” family. They include “Weekend Update” co-host Michael Che, who bemoaned all the questions he’d be getting about it on the press tour for his new Netflix special (“Thanks a lot, Shane,” he wrote on Instagram; Che might actually be joking).
But the criticism also included posts from women, including “SNL” graphic designer Jessie Leo, former writer Paula Pell and former cast members Ego Nwodim and Cecily Strong, who both made pointed but comedic hay over their own gym attire in light of the Gillis monologue. Strong’s post also addressed the timing of the monologue given the recent high-profile sexual assault case at Cornell University.
“SNL” and its longtime producer Lorne Michaels have yet to comment on the controversy, even as the outrage grows louder. (Not in all corners, though. Fox News aired a lengthy segment led by the chyron, “Liberals call HR on Shane Gillis.”)
Michaels, as shown in Morgan Neville’s recent documentary “Lorne,” tends to retreat to his home in Maine when the show’s not in production — “SNL” is on break and returns for a Halloween episode in two weeks — and he may not even be aware of the extent of the controversy.
But in inviting Gillis to host “SNL,” not once, not twice, but three times, Michaels himself is now in the crossfire, with many wondering why the comedian has been given so many chances despite his offensive monologues and middling sketch performances. What does Gillis have, besides a large audience of followers and a Netflix show, that others who’ve never hosted the show don’t? (A short top-of-the-dome list: Greta Lee, Gabriel Iglesias, Matthew Rhys, Michelle Pfeiffer, Lupita Nyong’o.)
In “Lorne,” the show’s chief provides some insight. Over dinner, he explains to a curious Steve Martin that the social-media blowup over Gillis that led to his firing happened stunningly fast and led NBC to put tremendous pressure on him to dispense with the comedian. But Michaels has also called the backlash an “overreaction” in a Hollywood Reporter interview, and described Gillis’ first “SNL” appearance like this: “And when he came back to the show last year [to host], we saw, “Oh, right, he’s really talented, and he would’ve been really good for us.”
That assessment doesn’t comport with the reality of the comic’s three lackluster appearances as guest host. In fact, it feels like Michaels is trying to prove to everyone that he was right to resist firing Gillis, a decision he clearly regrets. That’s either a masterful, high-stakes long game of passive-aggressive behavior or a level of stubbornness and unwillingness to acknowledge a mistake that is quickly and badly damaging the show’s reputation.
How bad were Gillis’ previous monologues? In the first, Gillis made fun of his father, who was in the audience, for being a volunteer girls’ high school basketball coach; he called himself and other boys who were close to their mothers as children “gay” and graphically described the moment he stopped being his mom’s best friend.
He went on to describe his relationship with a niece who has Down syndrome and looks like him, and to talk about a coffee shop his family owns that employs people with her disability. “There’s a line around the corner every day,” he joked, but not because of the demand; it’s because of the slow service.
The second monologue, just over a year later, described using Ken Burns documentaries to put women to sleep. “A Cosby tip for you,” Gillis said, “Who needs roofies when we have ‘Ken Burns presents the history of the buffalo’ on PBS?” The rest focused on white men asking women they’re dating if they’ve ever had sex with a Black man. “I’ve done it!” he shared, after acknowledging it’s a racist thing to do.
Based on what came before, it should have been clear that the latest monologue, which was shorter and less crafted than the previous ones, was going to be another train wreck. “SNL” attempted to score laughs by ostensibly presenting a right-leaning comic with MAGA-adjacent material to a liberal audience and then pretending that shocking them should be no big deal.
Monologues from stand-up comics who’ve hosted, such as Dave Chappelle, Nikki Glaser and John Mulaney, are typically the one nonmusical part of the show that aren’t heavily scripted. Those monologues aren’t on cue cards; the comedians are trusted to do their thing. But those monologues are still reviewed and vetted like other material on the show and performed as part of a dress rehearsal before the live show. That includes, presumably, prior review from Michaels. That means the monologue was deemed worthy of airing.
This was despite the fact that Gillis’ track record of problematic, punching-down monologues spoke for itself. The controversy is a self-inflicted wound Michaels could have easily avoided.
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