Dan Levy is encouraging male viewers to denounce Shane Gillis’ controversial “Saturday Night Live” monologue, noting he’d been personally left “speechless” after catching it over the weekend.
On Sunday evening, the “Schitt’s Creek” actor and co-creator shared a short video on Instagram in which he called Gillis out for his much-scrutinized “SNL” remarks.
“Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists,” Levy said. “There’s a difference there. By the way, I’ve seen more men’s nipples at the gym than I’ve seen women showing their bodies off.”
“But I’m speechless that something like that can exist on live national television,” he continued. “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.’”
Gillis returned to host “SNL” for the third time on Saturday, joined by Spanish singer Rosalía as musical guest. The Pennsylvania-born comedian shocked fans and critics, however, after delivering a roughly seven-minute monologue in which he made sexist observations about women’s activewear and, later, likened his hairstyle to Adolf Hitler’s.
“Going to the public gym as a fat guy, especially in New York, is a nightmare, dude,” he said. “It’s just the hottest gay guys you’ve ever seen. They’re jacked and they look at me, like, ‘Yeah, right.’ ‘I know, dude.’”
“Also I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now,” he continued. “Look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe [it]. Have you seen it? I’ve seen it. Have you seen the shorts? They’re those 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.”
Gillis, of course, didn’t stop there, referencing his “two big, fat-bitch sisters,” and lamenting that he’s “balded directly into an Adolf Hilter haircut.”
“It’s not good, because I give a lot of speeches and the front falls down a lot, and there’s no way to adjust it without looking exactly like [Hitler],” he said, before adding: “That’s it: You’re either gay or you’re Hitler. And isn’t that where we’re at as a country?”
Watch Shane Gillis’ opening “SNL” monologue below.
Gillis’ monologue wasn’t the only point of contention that arose during his “SNL” appearance. Later, he let an F-bomb slip during a Dr. Seuss-themed sketch in which he portrayed the son of the Lorax, played by Mikey Day.
At the conclusion of the episode, Gillis apologized for his use of NSFW language, but made no mention of his monologue, which drew a frenzy of criticism both online and in the media. “Shane Gillis Bombs ‘SNL’ Monologue (Again),” Variety’s headline read, while Deadline wrote the comedian “isn’t making the case for a triumphant return to the cast.”
Elsewhere in his Instagram video, Levy ― who hosted “SNL” in 2021 ― stressed that Gillis’ monologue was indicative of the many reasons that “men need to be defending women more.”
“This is not a women’s issue, this is an everybody issue,” he said. “Because the more that men objectify women in the media, the more that other men see them as objects and treat them as objects. They are not objects. They are superior human beings to men, OK? And I’m sorry if this gets me in trouble with the internet, but fuck.”
The reaction to Gillis’ “SNL” appearance isn’t especially surprising given his checkered history with the sketch comedy show. In September 2019, he was announced as a full-time “SNL” cast member, only to be fired days later when clips of his podcast in which he mocked Asians and used anti-LGBTQ+ language resurfaced online.
“SNL” creator and producer Lorne Michaels later acknowledged that Gillis’ firing was NBC’s decision and not his own.
“He said something stupid, but it got blown up into the end of the world,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2019. “I was angry. I thought, ‘You haven’t seen what we’re going to do, and what I’m going to try to bring out in him, because I thought he was the real thing.’”
Support for Gillis’ dismissal, he added, “was very strong from the people in charge. And obviously I was not on that side, but I understood it.”