Dan Levy Just Took on Shane Gillis Over His SNL Monologue, and His One Line Has Everyone Talking
Dan Levy Just Took on Shane Gillis Over His SNL Monologue, and His One Line Has Everyone Talking
Dan Levy does not usually wade into public fights. But after watching Saturday Night Live on October 10, 2026, the Schitt’s Creek star sat down, turned his phone camera on, and recorded a minute and a half of video that has now been watched, shared, and quoted across the internet. The target was host Shane Gillis, and specifically what Gillis said about women at the gym during his opening monologue.
Levy never said Gillis’s name. He did not have to. Everybody watching knew exactly what he was talking about, and so did Gillis’s other critics, who have turned the past week into one of the loudest backlashes SNL has seen in years.
What Shane Gillis actually said on SNL
Gillis was hosting Saturday Night Live for the third time. This was his first appearance of season 52, and he opened the night with a monologue about how long it had been since he last set foot in a gym.
“I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now,” he said. “I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe it.”
He went on to compare the brightly colored short shorts he sees women wearing to “artificial bait” on a fishing lure, and added that men were not allowed to look: “And don’t look; you’re not allowed to look.”
It was not even the only unplanned moment of his night. Later in the show, Gillis accidentally blurted out the F-word during a Dr. Seuss-inspired sketch, raised his hand to the audience in apology, and apologized again at the end of the sketch.
Dan Levy’s response, line by line
The next evening, Sunday October 11, Levy posted his video to Instagram. He kept Gillis’s name out of it, but addressed the monologue directly.
“Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists. There’s a difference there,” Levy said. “By the way, I’ve seen more men’s nipples at the gym than I’ve ever seen women showing their bodies off.”
Then he widened the lens: “I’m speechless that something like that can exist on live national television. 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.'”
His closing argument was that this was not a niche complaint. “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.”
He ended with a shrug toward the internet: “I’m sorry if this gets me in trouble with the internet, but f**k.”
In an earlier Instagram story that appeared to be inspired by the same monologue, Levy had bemoaned the “vile, repugnant, disgusting trash” that has been “pouring out of people’s mouths” lately.
He was far from the only voice
Levy’s video became the headline response, but the backlash was already rolling while the episode was still airing.
Cecily Strong, the longest-tenured female cast member in SNL history, fired back with her own Instagram story: a photo of her legs in workout gear with the caption, “On my way to Pilates in my new slutty ass orange shoes and rainbow socks. Might sell sex on the way not sure.”
Former SNL cast member Ego Nwodim posted a mirror gym selfie to her Instagram Stories with the caption “whore reporting for duty.” Country singer Maren Morris added her own blunt reaction, giving the middle finger to the monologue, according to PEOPLE.
On TikTok, dozens of women began posting their gym outfits with references to Gillis’s comment, turning the joke around on him.
And the pushback came from inside 30 Rock itself. Jessie Leo, a graphic designer who works on SNL, wrote on Instagram late Tuesday that the comment raised a workplace concern: “How am I ever supposed to feel comfortable going to NBC HR after knowing the company and people I work for gave the thumbs up for Shane’s whore joke during his monologue, in general, but especially at a time like this with rape culture and victim-blaming assailing women from all angles right now.”
The one party not talking: SNL itself
As CNN reported on October 14, everyone has weighed in on this controversy except SNL. The show and NBC have not commented publicly on the backlash, nor have they responded to requests for comment.
That silence is familiar territory for the show. SNL and its longtime boss Lorne Michaels have often chosen to ride out controversy without a word, including the backlash over Dave Chappelle, who has hosted twice since being criticized for transphobic comments he made in 2021.
There is also history with Gillis specifically. He was fired as an SNL cast member in 2019, just days after his hiring was announced, when clips surfaced of him using an ethnic slur against Chinese people and a mock Asian accent on his podcast, as well as gay slurs. At the time he described himself as a “comedian who pushes boundaries.” He has since become a regular guest host, and this was his third turn in the role.
Why this one blew up bigger than the usual SNL dustup
Levy’s video hit a nerve because it named something viewers were already feeling: that the monologue was not really about gym etiquette at all. Gillis himself joked about not being allowed to look at women filming their workouts, and nobody disputes that filming strangers at the gym raises real privacy questions. But the word he chose to describe women, and the way he leaned into it, turned a complaint about gym culture into a comment about women.
Levy, who hosted SNL himself in 2021, framed it as a call to other men rather than a callout of one comedian. That is the part that seems to be traveling furthest: the idea that staying quiet counts as a position too.
Whether SNL will ever address it is another question entirely. For now, the show’s strategy appears to be the same one it has used for decades: let the week pass, air the next episode, and move on. But the audience is not moving on quite so fast, and neither are the women who have spent the last week turning his line into their captions.
Further reading: Rosalia performed as musical guest on the same SNL episode. Read our coverage: Rosalia’s stunning SNL performance of “Reliquia”. For another SNL monologue moment, see Taylor Swift crashing Dakota Johnson’s SNL monologue.
