Dana Carvey became the latest “Saturday Night Live” figure to weigh in on host Shane Gillis’ controversial joke about women’s athletic wear on Sunday, saying that he didn’t “understand the kerfuffle” because the comedian wasn’t being serious.
“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! When you say jokes, you’re not literally saying ‘women are whores,’ you are literally joking,” Carvey said on the latest episode of his “Fly on the Wall” podcast with co-host David Spade. “Isn’t that kind of the idea? No? Did I just get canceled?”
Carvey added that he’d bet the joke in question “destroyed” in comedy clubs before Gillis performed it from the “SNL” stage as part of his Oct. 10 monologue, but explained that the sketch series’ Studio 8H was “not the right place” for it.
“Most of the audience is young women, so I think maybe that was not — it is very highly dressed up young women is the majority of the audience at ‘SNL,’” Carvey said, hypothesizing why the bit landed with a thud.
Gillis come under fire this week after his guest hosting gig on “SNL,” a program that previously fired him before he broke big on his own. He received blowback for a joke about women at the gym dressing like “whores.”
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now,” Gillis quipped.
He added: “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? Those neon, they’re like artificial bait-colored. And the wrinkles go around the cheeks and all combined 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.”
Celebrities and “SNL” alum like “Schitt’s Creek” creator-star Dan Levy and former cast member Ego Nwodim ridiculed Gillis for the bit, while “Weekend Update” host and writer Michael Che was more reluctant to join the dogpile.
“That’s comedy,” Che said. “It’s like, you think it’s funny and some people don’t.”
Carvey and Spade appeared to fall more in line with Che’s thinking on Sunday, with Spade adding that Gillis “knows that one’s going to be a button-pusher, but he doesn’t care.”
“It’s almost comical that there’s people that say, ‘Oh, don’t make fun of Onlyfans. Don’t make fun of strippers. These are sex workers, they need to be respected.’ And everyone hates Sydney Sweeney. And it’s like, what? Which one is it?” Spade said. “Let’s all decide what we hate and don’t, how about we just relax. Sometimes people just need to mind their biz. We don’t need a comment on everything.”
As far as whether or not the monologue is having a negative impact on Gillis, Spade said that “it actually helps him ultimately.”
“I think he’s that kind of Chappelle where he just does it and he walks away and then everyone fights over it,” he said.
Watch Carvey and Spade’s full “Fly on the Wall” episode in the video below.
The post Dana Carvey Doesn’t ‘Understand the Kerfuffle’ Over Shane Gillis’ ‘Whores’ Joke: ‘Did I Just Get Canceled?’ appeared first on TheWrap.
