Shane Gillis’ return to ‘Saturday Night Live’ was supposed to be a victory lap. Instead, the comedian’s monologue has turned into one of the more uncomfortable chapters of his career, and not only because of what he said about women’s gym clothes.
Gillis spent much of his seven minutes on stage mining his own life for material. He talked about his weight, his thinning hair, and his strange relationship with podcast host Joe Rogan, all in the loose, self-deprecating style that has become his trademark.
He opened by describing what he called a “fat rock bottom,” a moment of reckoning that hit him while watching himself in the background of frequent Bud Light commercials.
“I’d look up and see it on screen. I’d be like, oh no, I look like a lesbian. Gotta change,” he told the crowd.
From there he moved into a bit about trying to turn his health around, including a solo hiking trip that went nowhere near as peacefully as he’d hoped.
“Hiking was horrendous. It was one of the worst experiences. I went hiking by myself. Everyone was like, ‘You’re gonna love it. You’re gonna take in nature the whole time.’ I didn’t take in nature at all,” he said.
The Rogan material gave the monologue its most pointed moment. Gillis explained that Rogan keeps a private gym and sauna at his studio in Texas, which in theory gave Gillis a quiet space to work out without anyone watching. That privacy didn’t last.
While he was sitting alone in the sauna, Rogan and fellow comedian Theo Von knocked on the glass door just long enough to deliver an insult and vanish.
“Joe just goes, hey, Theo said you looked like a gas station egg,” Gillis recalled. “And then they closed the door, they left. I didn’t even get a comeback.” He added that the line stuck with him, joking that he caught his own reflection in the glass right after and had to admit the comparison wasn’t far off.
He also leaned on childhood memories, describing growing up with two older sisters whose teasing left a mark. He recalled getting mocked for relieving himself in the shower and being taunted for his hips while lying on the floor watching television as a kid.
He closed the set with a joke about his hair loss, comparing his balding pattern to the look of a reviled German leader, and joking that the resemblance limits how he can style his hair for public appearances.
None of that is what set social media on fire. The line that actually spread was about women’s workout clothes.
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like [ ] now?” Gillis said, before adding, “Look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe. Have you seen it? I’ve seen it. You’ve seen the shorts?”
He went on to describe the shorts in vivid, mocking detail: “They’re those neon, like, artificial bait-colored, and the wrinkles go around the cheeks and all combine at the [ ]hole.” He finished the bit with a mock warning to the audience: “And don’t look! You’re not allowed to look.”
The backlash was immediate. Critics accused Gillis of shaming women for what they choose to wear to the gym, and the complaints didn’t stay confined to anonymous commenters. Emmy winning actor and writer Dan Levy weighed in publicly, rejecting the premise of the joke entirely.
“Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them [ ],” Levy said in a video. “It makes the men calling them [ ] misogynists. There’s a difference there.”
He added a bit of his own observational humor to make the point land, noting, “By the way, I’ve seen more men’s nipples at the gym than I’ve ever seen women showing their bodies off.”
From there, Levy’s tone shifted from pointed to genuinely stunned. “I’m speechless that something like that can exist on live national television,” he said. He didn’t stop at criticizing the joke itself, instead widening the lens to talk about why this kind of material matters beyond the span of one bit.
“More men need to be standing up in opposition to it because it’s complacency that has created the environment in which women are SA’d and it’s a ‘conversation’ as opposed to a ‘crime,'” he said.
Levy was clear that he didn’t see this as an issue that only concerns one group of people. “This is not a women’s issue, this is an everybody issue,” he said, before explaining the ripple effect he believes jokes like Gillis’ can have. “Because the more that men objectify women in the media, the more that other men see them as objects and treat them as objects,” he said. “They are not objects. They are superior human beings to men, OK?”
Additionally, just days before the episode aired Gillis’ former girlfriend, Grace Brassel, had posted a video reflecting on a past relationship she said had taken a toll on her sense of self. She didn’t name Gillis directly in the clip, but the implication was clear enough that it quickly became part of the conversation swirling around his ‘SNL’ appearance.
“Last year I was in a relationship that fully stripped me of who I am,” Brassel said in the post, which mixed footage of her crying with later clips showing her in a visibly happier place. She said the shift was intentional, meant to show that things can get better after a hard breakup.
Brassel said she had held off on speaking publicly for a long time, largely out of concern over how Gillis’ fans would react.
“I’ve been so terrified to even talk about what I went through, especially after relentless bullying from his fanbase (for no reason),” she said. Her stated goal wasn’t to relitigate the relationship but to offer some encouragement to anyone going through something similar.
“I want to share this to let women know IT GETS BETTER!! And you can do it!” she wrote. “I had it on level hard mode and I survived! And I’ve never been happier.”
The response to her post wasn’t uniformly sympathetic. Some commenters questioned why she’d filmed herself crying in the first place, which pushed her to clarify the footage wasn’t created for an audience.
“I have videos of me crying because I used it as a video diary for myself. I never thought I would share them,” she explained. She also made clear she wasn’t surprised by the skepticism. “I know that his fans are going to purposefully misunderstand me; I’m used to it,” she said.
Brassel was careful to position her message as bigger than her own situation, insisting the point had nothing to do with her ex’s level of fame. “The main point of this video is for people to know there’s more to life… regardless if my ex is a famous comedian or not,” she said. “I want to show there’s hope. Sending love to you all.”
Gillis has not addressed Brassel’s video or commented on the connection some have drawn between it and his monologue.
