Follow-Up: Shane Gillis Breaks Silence on SNL Monologue Backlash, Rates His Set a 'Solid C Minus' and Says He Promised 'No Controversy'
Comedian Shane Gillis publicly addressed the backlash over his October 10 Saturday Night Live opening monologue for the first time on November 13, speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. According to Page Six, it was Gillis's first direct response more than a month after the monologue aired. He said he had assured the show's team before the broadcast that the set contained 'no controversy,' only for a joke about women's gym clothing to draw sustained criticism.
The controversy began with the October 10 episode, Gillis's third time hosting the NBC sketch show. In the monologue he said he had not been to a gym in a long time and used a derogatory term to describe how women dress at the gym now, prompting an immediate backlash in the studio and online. Schitt's Creek star Dan Levy criticized the remark in an Instagram video, former cast member Ego Nwodim appeared to mock it with a gym selfie, and SNL alumnus Dana Carvey defended Gillis, calling the remark simply a joke. GSM reported the controversy and the reactions in October.
On Rogan's podcast, Gillis explained why the show had not stopped the joke. 'Not to defend SNL, they don't approve it. I mean, they could shut it down,' he said. 'They could, but you don't write your set and give it to them.' He recalled that when the show's team asked about the monologue beforehand, he told them it was not his strongest material but would cause no trouble: 'I'm giving you a solid C minus of a monologue, but I promise there's no controversy. I'm calling myself fat for 10 minutes. That's it.'
Gillis also clarified that he does not actually have a problem with what women wear to the gym, and suggested the scale of the backlash 'obviously had a lot to do with the climate' at the time. He said he handled this controversy differently from 2019: after being fired from the show that year he kept his social media and kept reading the negative comments, whereas this time he deleted all of his accounts immediately.
Gillis's history with Saturday Night Live has been turbulent. In September 2019 he was dropped from the cast just days after his hiring was announced, after recordings surfaced of him using racist and homophobic slurs on a podcast. He rebuilt his career through stand-up and his own shows, returned to host SNL for the first time in February 2024, and hosted again in 2025 and in October 2026. The October monologue backlash is the biggest controversy of his return so far.
Source: Page Six
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：喜剧演员 Shane Gillis 2025年9月26日在佛罗里达州 Hollywood 的 Hard Rock Live 演出。Quintin Soloviev 摄，CC BY 4.0 授权，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Comedian Shane Gillis performing at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida, on September 26, 2025. Photo by Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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