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Dan Levy received support from several celebrities, including Viola Davis and Hannah Einbinder, after speaking out against Shane Gillis’s controversial SNL monologue.Willy Sanjuan/The Associated Press
Canadian comedian Dan Levy was not happy with Shane Gillis’s Saturday Night Live monologue.
Gillis hosted SNL for the third time on Saturday, stirring controversy in his opening monologue that touched on his weight loss journey and returning to the gym.
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now,” Gillis said during his speech.
“The shorts. Have you seen the shorts?” he said. “Those neon, they’re like artificial bait-coloured. And the wrinkles go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole. And don’t look, you’re not allowed to look.”
Levy posted a video to Instagram on Sunday about the SNL monologue without naming Gillis. Levy said that he was “speechless that something like that can exist on live national television.”
“Women wearing shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists. There’s a difference there,” Levy said.
“More men need to be standing up in opposition to it because it’s complacency that has created the environment with which women are sexually assaulted and it’s a conversation, as opposed to a crime,” he continued.
Numerous celebrities – including actresses Viola Davis and Hannah Einbinder, and rapper Flava Flav – voiced support for Levy in the post’s comment section.
Gillis has not responded to Levy’s comments or to overall criticism of his monologue.
Gillis’s monologue aired weeks after New York State prosecutors reopened an investigation into an alleged sexual assault of a Cornell University student in 2024. The woman filed a civil lawsuit last month saying several members of a campus fraternity drugged and assaulted her.
The case has sparked outrage around the globe, including protests over Cornell’s handling of the case, and the viral social movement “I am Jane Doe.”
Gillis had also made headlines on Saturday night after dropping the F-bomb during a Dr. Seuss-inspired sketch that NBC aired uncensored. The comedian apologized for the slip at the end of the broadcast.
Gillis had been hired by SNL in 2019, but was dropped before his debut after a video from 2018 resurfaced, in which he used an anti-Asian slur and complained about Asian people trying to learn English.
The show apologized at the time, saying its vetting process “was not up to our standard.”
With a report from the Associated Press