Bobby Bones has thrown his support behind Shane Gillis’ polarizing “Saturday Night Live” monologue.
The radio personality and “Dancing with the Stars” champion, 46, devoted a segment of Sunday’s “25 Whistles with Bobby Bones” podcast to praising the comedian’s risk-taking approach. Bones told listeners he found the bit “pretty funny” overall and singled out Gillis’ material about women’s gym shorts as a highlight.
“He said it looks like the color of an artificial bait, artificial lure,” Bones shared. “And I thought that was so funny.”
Bones, who has grown out his brown hair, noted that his enthusiasm for the joke drew unexpected attention in a now-deleted TikTok video. He told followers there that anyone who “don’t get the joke” about the shorts is “probably not from the South” or has “probably never been fishing.” The pushback came swift: “And then everyone’s like, ‘are you trans? Or are you a lesbian?’ Because of my hair,” he recounted on the podcast.
Gillis, 38, delivered the monologue during his “SNL” hosting debut over the weekend after years in comedy’s spotlight for very different reasons. The Pennsylvania native was briefly cast on the NBC sketch show in 2019, then fired within a week when podcast clips surfaced of him using racist and homophobic slurs. His return as host marked a full-circle moment that immediately reignited controversy.
The gym material that Bones found so amusing landed differently with other viewers. “I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t realize women just dressed like whores now,” Gillis told the studio audience, drawing a mixed response of laughs and groans. He pressed further, describing the athletic wear as “neon” and “like artificial bait color” before adding anatomical detail: “The wrinkles go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole.” He capped the bit with a warning about the filming culture: “And don’t look, you’re not allowed to look. For real, don’t look because they are filming. I’m in the background of about 10 TikToks right now.”
The performance also included an uncensored F-bomb later in the broadcast, adding to the episode’s envelope-pushing tone.
Not everyone in the entertainment world shared Bones’ enthusiasm. “Schitt’s Creek” star Dan Levy blasted the monologue on Instagram Sunday, calling Gillis a “misogynist” and declaring himself “speechless” at the content.
“Women wearing short shorts to the gym does not make them whores,” Levy wrote. “It makes the men calling them whores misogynists. There’s a difference there.”
The Emmy winner pressed for broader male solidarity against such rhetoric, urging more men to “stand up in opposition” and arguing that males “need to be defending women more.”
Some women in comedy responded with pointed humor rather than direct condemnation. “SNL” alum Ego Nwodim took to Instagram Stories after the episode aired, filming herself mid-workout with a peace sign and the caption “whore reporting for duty.”
Country-pop singer Maren Morris similarly mocked Gillis through performance, posting an Instagram Reel of herself flipping the middle finger to onscreen text reading “me being a whore at the gym.” Her accompanying message kept the focus on the clothing itself: “leave my gym short wedgie out of it.”
Bones’ defense of Gillis fits a pattern in his commentary style. The Arkansas-raised broadcaster has built a career on conversational, sometimes contrarian takes that resonate with his substantial Heartland following. His podcast platform allows for the kind of unfiltered reaction that traditional media outlets might temper.
The episode underscores how Gillis’ comedy continues to split audiences along familiar fault lines. What Bones frames as admirable chance-taking — “He just kind of goes at it,” he observed, “Got to respect that he takes chances up there” — others experience as targeted hostility toward marginalized groups.
For Gillis, the hosting gig represented both professional vindication and a reminder of why his 2019 “SNL” hiring imploded so quickly. The comedian has since built a significant following through his “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” and Netflix specials, cultivating an audience that embraces his deliberately provocative style. The weekend’s monologue suggests he has little interest in moderating that approach for network television.
The fallout has kept both men’s names trending across platforms, with defenders and critics trading accusations about cancel culture, comedy boundaries, and who gets to decide where the line falls.
Gillis continues his stand-up tour with upcoming dates across the Midwest and South.