Kathy Griffin Calls Shane Gillis a 'Hack' After SNL Gym Joke Sparks Backlash

Kathy Griffin isn’t laughing at Shane Gillis, and she made that very clear in a new interview with Page Six. The Emmy-winning comedian called him a“hack”after his SNL monologue joke that women at the gym“dress like whores,”but her reasoning is more nuanced than a simple drag. Griffin said she defends his First Amendment right to make the joke, and she also defends everyone else’s right to think less of him for it. That two-sides-of-the-same-coin take is the part everyone’s quoting.

Griffin went further, taking aim at the wider wave of podcast and TikTok-era male comics, Joe Rogan’s orbit included, saying they all look and sound alike and rely on outdated material about women. Her sharpest line?“Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores. It makes the men calling them whores misogynists.”Gillis isn’t new to this kind of controversy either. He was hired at SNL back in 2019 and fired within a week after old racist and homophobic podcast clips resurfaced. Ego Nwodim and Dan Levy have also criticized his monologue this time around.

So the debate lands right where comedy always does lately: free speech on one side, accountability on the other, and a whole lot of opinions in the middle. Griffin, who’s currently on tour with a show at The Town Hall on Friday, clearly isn’t worried about ruffling feathers. Where do you land: was the joke fair game, or has this style of comedy officially run its course? Drop your take in the comments.