Inde Navarrette used her Saturday Night Live hosting debut to take a swipe at Shane Gillis, recycling his gym joke to applause from the studio audience — proving the show that once fired him for wrongthink still can't stop talking about him.
The bit captures the whole arc of the cancel culture machine's failure. SNL fired Gillis in 2019 before he ever appeared on screen, after old podcast clips surfaced of language the network deemed unacceptable. Rather than disappearing, Gillis built one of the most popular podcasts in the country, sells out theaters nationwide, and last month hosted the very show that tried to cancel him. Now NBC's best move is sending other hosts up to snipe at him from the monologue stage.
According to Page Six, Navarrette — set to play Rogue in an upcoming X-Men film — told the audience she's been working out for the Marvel role. "So, every morning I put on my little whore outfit and I hit the gym," she quipped, drawing applause.
The line was a direct callback to Gillis's own Oct. 10 SNL monologue, where he joked: "Also, I haven't been to the gym in so long I didn't know women just dress like whores now?" Page Six reported that Gillis went on to poke fun at women wearing tight-fitting shorts and complained about being discouraged from staring, particularly when they might be filming themselves for social media.
The backlash was immediate and predictable. Schitt's Creek star Dan Levy posted an Instagram video declaring: "Women wearing short shorts at the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists." Former SNL cast members Ego Nwodim and Cecily Strong also piled on, Page Six reported.
Deadline framed Navarrette's quip as her "flexing her comedy muscle" and described it as "a joke about Shane Gillis's sexist opening monologue." Page Six called it a "savage swipe." Neither outlet paused to note the irony: SNL, the institution that fired Gillis for offensive jokes, is now booking hosts who recycle his material for laughs.
Navarrette also used her monologue to plug her role in Curry Barker's Obsession and joke about her boyfriend Nick Aiello, who was shown tied up and gagged in the audience. Deadline noted the Halloween episode featured Gracie Abrams as musical guest and included sketches ranging from a fake Delta commercial to a dating-show parody. The sketch comedy was there. The swipe at Gillis was what got the press.
A rep for Gillis didn't immediately respond to Page Six's request for comment. He doesn't need to. The man was fired by SNL, hosted SNL, and is now the comedian SNL guests name-check for attention.
Navarrette's joke landed to applause. Gillis's joke landed to backlash. The difference isn't the material — it's who the establishment decided was allowed to tell it. The same network that said Gillis's words were beyond the pale handed another performer a monologue slot to build on them. The referee is the story, and the referee keeps moving the goalposts.
