“I haven’t been to the gym in so long I didn’t know women just dress like whores now?” Shane Gillis said during his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live on 10 October, his third time hosting the show since his 2019 firing.

He went on to describe women at the gym wearing ruched booty shorts, calling them “artificial bait-coloured” and making graphic jokes about the attention their design drew to women’s backsides. He also complained that gym-goers were discouraged from looking because women were filming TikToks (and that he was probably in the background of several videos).

The monologue drew criticism from Dan Levy, who called the remarks misogynistic, and former SNL cast member Ego Nwodim, who responded with pointed social media posts.

Levy, co-creator and star of Schitt’s Creek, challenged Gillis’ framing in an Instagram video posted on Sunday, 11 October.

“Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists. There’s a difference there,” Levy said. He also pointed to what he saw as a double standard in how men and women are perceived at the gym. “By the way, I’ve seen more men’s nipples at the gym than I’ve ever seen women showing their bodies off,” he added.

Levy questioned how such remarks could be broadcast on national television and argued that men needed to speak out much more against misogyny. He connected the normalisation of such rhetoric to the wider culture surrounding sexual assault, before concluding: “This is not a women’s issue. This is an everybody issue.”

Nwodim, who left SNL in 2025 after seven seasons, offered a response of her own on Monday, 12 October. She posted a gym mirror selfie on her Instagram Story with the caption “whore reporting for duty”. She followed it with a photograph of her eggs Benedict, adding: “getting my 30 grams of protein in after heauxing.”

The gym jokes were not the only controversial part of the monologue. Gillis also turned his attention to his receding hairline, joking that he had “balded directly into an Adolf Hitler haircut”. He said brushing his hair to the side would make him look gay, before delivering the punchline: “You’re either gay or you’re Hitler, and isn’t that where we’re at as a country?”

The episode also produced a separate live-television mishap. During a sketch inspired by Dr Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, Gillis accidentally dropped an F-bomb, creating another talking point from the broadcast.

The controversy comes against the backdrop of Gillis’ complicated relationship with SNL. In September 2019, the show announced him as a new cast member alongside Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang. Five days later, it fired him after podcast clips resurfaced in which he used racist and homophobic slurs, mocked Chinese accents and made derogatory remarks about Asian people. The show described the language as “offensive, hurtful and unacceptable”.

Gillis subsequently described himself as a comedian who pushed boundaries and expressed a willingness to apologise to anyone offended by his remarks.

After his dismissal, Gillis went on to build a substantial standup career and create, write and star in the Netflix comedy series Tires. He returned to host SNL in February 2024 and March 2025, making his 10 October appearance his third time hosting since his firing.

That history does not, by itself, settle the question of whether Gillis should be given a platform on the show. But his return makes each subsequent appearance more than a routine booking. SNL is choosing to put him on a stage that has spent decades shaping, reflecting and occasionally challenging mainstream American culture. What he does with that platform, and what the show chooses to broadcast, are part of the same conversation.

The question is not whether comedy should be allowed to offend. It is what a joke asks its audience to find funny, and at whose expense.