It’s been hard to exist as a person on the Internet this week and not feel bombarded by hot takes on Shane Gillis. The popular stand-up’s monologue on SNL, in which he claimed women dress “like whores” when they go to the gym, has become a lightning rod cultural issue that’s been hard to escape. I’ve felt that as just a random person existing in the world. I can’t imagine how it has felt for Gillis himself or those who actually work at SNL. If we can take anything from this Michael Che interview, however, it’s obviously been a week.
The Weekend Update co-host has been making the rounds this week to promote his new comedy special Shot In Minnesota which hit Netflix this week. Not surprisingly, many of the questions have not been about that special but instead about the Shane Gillis situation. Che hilariously addressed his frustration over the questions by dropping an Instagram post thanking Gillis for putting him in the position.
Unfortunately for Che, that just led to another round of questions, specifically on Today, where he was repeatedly asked whether he thought the monologue was funny. The video is going viral for obvious reasons, as it’s extremely clear Che would rather be anywhere else in the world than in that interview answering that question. Watch the clip below…
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Whatever Che thought of Gillis’ monologue, it’s very clear he doesn’t feel like he’s the right person to weigh in on whether other comedians have gone too far. His foul-mouthed and extremely mean-spirited joke swaps with his co-anchor Colin Jost have never pulled a punch, and some of his stand-up material is edgy and intentionally pushes boundaries. He told the interviewer that, and after this clip from Today started flying around the Internet, he doubled down in a follow-up post on Instagram. Here’s a portion of his comment…
the TRUTH is i was promoting my netflix special where i make fun of charlie kirk, i call the president the r-word, i talk about dating “loose women”, blue balling gay dudes and allude to god being a bad father… so far be it from me, to thumb my nose at anyone else’s attempt at humor.
Some comedians have come out and very directly slammed Gillis’ monologue, but many clearly feel like it’s not in stand-up comedy’s best interest to make broad claims like you shouldn’t use certain words or joke about certain subject matter. Comedy has always been about pushing boundaries and commenting on taboo topics. So, it’s simpler for people to say they didn’t think a joke was funny than to say he shouldn’t have joked about something specific.
Fortunately for Che and everyone else involved, SNL will no doubt make new and louder headlines in the near future. Obsession star Inde Navarrette is hosting on Halloween and Druski is hosting the next week. I’m not sure how hard Navarrette’s episode will go, but Druski has certainly never met a controversy he didn’t run headfirst into. I’m not sure anything he does will produce the same level of intensity as we got from Gillis, but it should produce enough to help SNL move on from the conversation.
