Shane Gillis drew backlash after saying what did Shane Gillis say on Saturday Night Live: women at the gym looked “Like whores.” He made the remark during one Saturday Night Live monologue, then doubled down by saying he had not been to the gym in a while and should be forgiven for being surprised by how women dress to work out now.
Gillis also said women at the gym wear tight shorts and the color of “artificial bait.” That mix of insult and pseudo-explanation turned a live-comedy bit into a workplace issue, because the comment landed inside a show that sells itself on a public standard and a network that had already taken heat over his hiring history.
Jessie Leo posts on Instagram
Late Tuesday, Jessie Leo, a graphic designer who works on Saturday Night Live, said on Instagram that she did not know how she was supposed to feel comfortable going to NBC HR after the company gave the thumbs up for Shane’s whore joke. She added, “In general, but especially at a time like this with rape culture and victim-blaming assailing women from all angles right now.”
Less than 200 words into her post, Leo put the issue where it belongs: not as a culture-war talking point, but as a workplace complaint about who gets protected and who gets asked to absorb the joke. That is the part that makes the silence around Saturday Night Live and NBC harder to brush off, because one employee is talking about HR access while the company says nothing publicly.
Cecily Strong and Ego Nwodim
Earlier this week, Ego Nwodim wrote “whore reporting for duty” on a picture of herself dressed for the gym, while Cecily Strong posted, “On my way to Pilates in my new slutty ass orange shoes and rainbow socks.” Strong also wrote, “Might sell sex on the way not sure.” Their replies turned the monologue into an internal response test: whether the show’s own names answer a misogynistic punch line by mocking it, redirecting it, or letting it sit.
That reaction arrived after Gillis’ Saturday Night Live appearance, which followed his earlier firing from the show after clips emerged of him using an ethnic slur against Chinese people, a mock Asian accent, and gay slurs on his podcast. The booking itself became part of the criticism, because the show brought back a host whose past already made his return a flashpoint.
Dan Levy's one-minute rebuttal
Dan Levy pushed back in a one-and-a-half minute video, saying, “Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists.” He added, “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,'” which widened the argument from one joke to the social permission structure around it.
Saturday Night Live and NBC had not commented publicly on the backlash, and that gap now matters more than the monologue itself. Gillis used a one Saturday Night Live monologue to set off criticism, but the unresolved question is why How NBC and Saturday Night Live gave him the hosting role at all after the earlier firing that put him off the show in the first place.
