Shane Gillis' ESPYs Monologue Wasn't Great — But Not for the Reasons You Think
Gillis, a standup comedian and the co-creator and star of Netflix's Tires, is probably best known for lasting like four hours at Saturday Night Live — Lorne Michaels felt compelled to fire Gillis after some non-PC clips of a 2018 episode of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast were resurfaced — though he has gone on to host the show, twice.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Simone Biles Among Top Winners at 2025 ESPY Awards
How to Watch the 2025 ESPY Awards Online
First-Time Nominee Cooper Koch Is "Devastated" Over Emmy Snubs for Two of His 'Monsters' Co-Stars
By now, you've probably read both praise and criticism on Gillis' monologue — he's that kind of comic. Gillis is wildly popular among his base, and controversial among non-fans. This was always gonna go some sort of way, and ESPN executives knew that when they gave Gillis the gig. Gillis has appeared on the network's College GameDay show, where he (internet-)famously got into it with Nick Saban, an all-time great college football coach and an analyst on the popular ESPN program.
There were some positives from Gillis' ESPYs monologue. First of all, he dressed better than I'd expect, so there's that; Gillis' respect for the audience largely stopped there.
Though Gillis had some tough (even by modern awards-show standards) punchlines for the guests, he started light.
'[Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander] is here, give it up for SGA. Hell yeah, bro,' Gillis said. 'And now, everyone sitting around him is in foul trouble.'
It's a good opener — a nice B+ joke that eases the audience into things. It says Gillis is here to poke fun, not poke the bear. That was short-lived.
'Megan Rapinoe isn't here,' Gillis said next. 'Nice.'
That was the joke. And it was where things started to go sideways. For Gillis fans, a punchline of 'Nice.' and a smirk is kind of a staple of his persona — it's almost a catchphrase. The joke is polarizing, sure, but so is Rapinoe to Gillis' base (and vice-versa). Rapinoe, the U.S. soccer great, in 2016 kneeled during the national anthem in support of Colin Kaepernick. She's ripped the NCAA in front of Congress and has called out U.S. Soccer in a discrimination suit.
The joke got some laughs — it was still early on and the benefit-of-the-doubt time. Gillis saved the moment somewhat.
'No? We're gonna pretend she's a good time?' he said. 'Alright.'
Being unbothered by the negative reception of a joke or opinion is another Shane Gillis hallmark. He rolls with the punches as well as he throws punches.
Gillis is an anomaly. He presents as a right-wing good ol' boy, but he's not ignorant; Gillis does not fit neatly into the box that people project on him, and that can be confusing for crowds and critics. Like, what do you do when Shane Gillis makes Trump jokes? Let's find out.
'Donald Trump wants to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn,' Gillis said to a crowd that included some UFC greats. 'The last time he staged a fight in D.C., Mike Pence almost died.'
It took some time, but the joke — a reference to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — worked. It even got an applause break. It was as if the crowd collectively thought, 'Oh, wait — is he on our side (politically)?' It's another regular occurrence at a Shane Gillis show, where preconceived notions (one way or the other) don't work out.
'There was supposed to be an Epstein joke here,' Gillis continued to roll at the ESPYs, gesturing to the teleprompter, 'but I guess it got deleted.'
'It probably deleted itself, right? Probably never existed, actually,' he quipped. 'Let's move on as a country and ignore that.'
Gillis does not let you pin him down. It's the political comedy you didn't expect to get out of a big guy who looks like that and pals around with Joe Rogan.
But just as quickly as Gillis got his good-guy status back among the Dolby Theatre audience, he called out Karl-Anthony Towns in a reference to viral memes that depict the New York Knicks star as an effeminate defender of the basketball.
'The New York Knicks had a great season.'
Applause.
'Karl-Anthony Towns is here. Hey guuurl!'
Perhaps surprisingly, that one actually went over alright, which is really unfortunate for K.A.T. The (mostly) positive reaction to what was effectively a gay joke seems to indicate that a crowd full of Towns' fellow professional athletes lost the 'proper' public response to such material to a subconscious sense of agreement with its concept. That cannot feel good, regardless of whether you think the joke sucks or not.
The next joke was a Juneteenth joke, so you can probably guess how that went over.
'Maxx Crosby is here. I hope you had a good Juneteenth, brother.'
Crosby is not Black, but there is a narrative out there about him having a 'pass' to use the N-word (with an 'a' at the end, not 'er') in social settings. There is also a common assumption that Crosby caught himself in mid-use of the word in a 2023 call to action for Las Vegas Raiders fans. So that's the joke, more so than a mockery of the holiday itself — but it also does (at least) kind of belittle the relatively new national holiday, which celebrates the ending of slavery.
Next, Gillis straight-up got booed — not by everyone, though enough to hear on TV — but the hyper-negative response wasn't really fair to the point of the joke.
'Joe Rogan actually wanted me to be here to host this awards show so that I could capture (NBA commissioner) Adam Silver, because Joe thinks he's an alien,' Gillis said. 'And Donald Trump wanted me to be here to capture Juan Soto, for the same reason.'
Saying Silver looks like an alien would be a cheap joke, but it's not the joke here — it's the setup. The joke is on President Trump and ICE — it is identifying the ridiculousness of the mass-deportation witch hunt. The groans and boos were a misunderstanding of the intention; they came from people who (likely) heard 'alien' in the same sentence as the name of a popular baseball player from the Dominican Republic and instinctually found it to be an off-color joke told by a racist.
But that's not the point. Gillis is calling out what he (and 80 percent of the crowd, probably) sees to be a racist initiative by the federal government. Soto is an alien; he came to the U.S. in July 2015 when he was 16 years old, and only because he was drafted by the Washington Nationals, ironically. And also, the NBA commissioner, Silver, does look like an alien.
The general reception to the monologue as a whole was mixed in the room, multiple ESPYs attendees told The Hollywood Reporter; some jokes were called 'hilarious,' while others 'missed the mark.' One production source told THR that the monologue played better in the room than on the screen.
Here, I should point out how difficult it is to have a strong ESPYs monologue. You can pretty much only make jokes about sports, and you're telling them to some of the worst sports on the planet. These aren't trained actors in the audience — it is a ballroom full of some of the most disciplined, God-gifted, physical specimens on the planet — in other words, the people that bullied the rest of us into developing a sense of humor. When you look like DK Metcalf, no one makes fun of you.
Gillis bailed himself out with his next joke. He picked the perfect target for the perfect spot in his set.
'Aaron Rodgers did not take the (COVID-19) vaccine because he thought it would be bad for him,' Gillis said. 'And then he joined the New York Jets.'
There are very few things worse for you than playing for that organization.
The joke has the same political slant as the Soto joke — it was just easier for the audience to digest. And it got Gillis on a roll.
'It's a big year for the WNBA. I love Caitlin Clark,' Gillis said. 'Caitlin Clark and I have a lot in common: we're both whites from the Midwest who have nailed a bunch of threes.'
To borrow a phrase from Gillis here: Hell, yeah.
The joke works because 1) it's clever and 2) Gillis made himself the butt of the joke. It gifted Gillis enough grace for the next one.
'When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she's going to work at a Waffle House,' Gillis said, 'so she can continue doing what she loves most: fist-fighting Black women.'
That one generally landed as well, but it tightened up some of the audience again. The joke here is about how many physical altercations Clark — a white woman — has gotten into in the WNBA, a predominantly Black league. Clark is the league's biggest star and appears to be the target of regular physical antagonization on the court. The Waffle House clientele and behavior piece is, of course, a stereotype. But together, it's funny. We can laugh about these things together.
Well, maybe not the executives backstage: ESPN has been a staunch supporter of the WNBA (and the NBA), and recently signed another long-term TV deal.
Unfortunately, after that, Gillis definitely did not land the plane.
He went on a run about legendary New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and his much younger girlfriend, Jordon Hudson. One joke was a particularly ill-advised shot about the WAGS (wives and girlfriends of sportsmen) in the crowd.
'[Bill Belichick] has won six Super Bowls. He's dating a hot 24-year-old. Maybe if you guys won six Super Bowls, you wouldn't be sitting next to a fat, ugly dog-wife.'
Woof.
Why? Well, the idea is that Belichick is a hell of a winner, and maybe the rest of the room should back off a bit on his personal life. OK sure, but mean-spirited comedy doesn't work when it's not funny. Gillis knows that, but he's an envelope pusher as much as he is a button pusher.
'They let me do it. This is Disney. They allowed that,' Gillis said. 'We should have taken that out. I had doubts going into that — that didn't work all week.'
When in doubt, go back to Trump. But not like this.
Gillis then spent more than two minutes of a 10-minute monologue telling an aimless Trump story that seemed to only exist as a platform for his (quite good) impression of the POTUS — and probably as a cheap way to get the audience back on his side. In classic Gillis fashion, however, he offset the jokes for those on the left with a joke for those on the right. Another WNBA joke — a cheap one about WNBA players looking like men — didn't work. It also just made things officially weird when you add up the number of jokes about one league. It's a bit of tipping your hand, and it's a bad look.
Gillis had one last chance to win the day. And to some degree, he did by endearing himself to the audience with a sweet, thoughtful, meta tribute.
'There's one thing I wanna say before I get out of here,' Gillis wound down. 'You guys aren't gonna like it.'
Oh, OK then. Please go on?
'But it was a Norm Macdonald joke that I loved when he hosted the ESPYs and I'm gonna do it now,' Gillis continued.
'Travis Hunter won the Heisman Trophy this year. He's the first defensive player since Charles Woodson to win the Heisman. Congratulations, Travis Hunter. Winning the Heisman — that's something they can never take away from you. Unless you kill your wife and a waiter.'
Macdonald's original telling of the joke is my favorite joke of all time — proof here — so I saw it coming with Shane's setup. It was a cool and touching idea for very few of us. For Gillis, it was personal. (Macdonald died in 2021.)
Norm, the ultimate comics' comic, was fired from SNL: Weekend Update in January 1998 after repeatedly making jokes about O.J. Simpson, a close friend of NBC's west coast president Don Ohlmeyer. Jim Downey, who wrote the jokes with Norm, was also let go (though he would return). Their SNL tenures were far, far longer than Gillis'.
Mere months after Macdonald's SNL demotion (he stayed as a cast member for a very short bit after), the Dirty Work star hosted the ESPY Awards. That year's Heisman winner was Woodson, the first-ever defensive player to win the coveted best-college-football-player trophy. Less than three years prior, Simpson, the 1968 Heisman winner, was acquitted of murder in the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman, a server at Mezzaluna Trattoria. Though the Heisman Trust never actually revoked Simpson's trophy — a common misconception that almost happened — it had been removed from USC's Heritage Hall lobby after Simpson's arrest (and then later put back on display, and then stolen.)
That is the environment in which the joke happened. It was perfect, it was vengeful and it was hilarious. It was almost 30 years ago, before most of the athletes in the crowd were even born. Gillis' retelling of the joke lacked the context and understanding of his audience. And that pretty much sums up Gillis' ESPYs monologue.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series
22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History
A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Jets to have officials at camp to reduce penalties, says coach Aaron Glenn
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — The New York Jets hope seeing more black-and-white stripes in training camp will result in fewer yellow flags during the season. Coach Aaron Glenn said Friday the team will often have officials at practice through the summer after the Jets, under the previous regime of coach Robert Saleh, led the NFL in penalties the last two seasons. New York rarely used officials during training camp practices during those summers. Many NFL teams hire officials for at least some of their camp practices, giving players the opportunity to get used to how plays are called in a non-game environment. 'I want the officials here as much as possible and they know that,' Glenn said. "It's no secret that we were the most-penalized team in the league last year, so that's one of the things that I want to nip in the bud early — making sure that the discipline part of what we do, that we fix that now. 'You cannot win games in this league with an undisciplined team, so all the penalties that we had last year, we're knocking those things out.' Last season, the Jets were penalized 137 times, five more than Tennessee and Baltimore, and finished 5-12 — with Saleh and general manager Joe Douglas both fired in the middle of the season. In 2023, New York was called for 124 penalties, nine more than Cleveland and Dallas, and went 7-10. 'The officials are going to be here and we're going to knock that out, all right,' Glenn said. 'I will tell you this: We are going to knock these penalties out. We're going to understand that undisciplined teams do not win games.' Philadelphia, last year's Super Bowl champion, ranked 11th in the NFL with 103 penalties. Kansas City, the AFC champion, was fourth with 94. The Los Angeles Rams, who won the NFC West, had the fewest penalties in the league with 91. Glenn said there are two types of calls on players during games: pre-snap penalties — 'the dumb penalties' — and competitive penalties, including pass interference. 'The competitive penalties, listen, you go back and forth with those, right?' Glenn said. 'Like P.I., guys are fighting. Those are competitive penalties. Holds, those are competitive. Now, false starts, jumping offside, hitting after plays, the dumb stuff, we've got to knock those out. And we control those. And those are the things I want to make sure we get rid of.' ___ AP NFL:
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Yankees acquiring 3B Ryan McMahon in trade with Rockies
The Yankees are making an upgrade at third base, acquiring Ryan McMahon from the Colorado Rockies, according to Mark Feinsand. New York is sending two pitching prospects in exchange for the 2024 All-Star, including LHP Griffin Herring, per ESPN's Jorge Castillo. The Rockies are currently a league-worst 26-76 and on pace for the worst record in major league history. McMahon is in the fourth year of a six-year, $70 million contract. He's owed $16 million in both of the next two seasons before becoming a free agent ahead of the 2028 season. The 30-year-old is slashing .217/.314/.403 this season with 16 home runs, 15 doubles, and 35 RBI over 100 games. He's struck out a league-leading 127 times, but is still on pace for his fifth straight 20-plus home run season and sixth of his career. It's a drop-off from his All-Star 2024 season in which he hit .242 with 20 homers, 28 doubles, and 65 RBI. McMahon had a career-best 4.0 WAR in 2021 with 23 home runs, 32 doubles, and 86 RBI in 151 games. He was drafted by Colorado in the second round of the 2013 MLB Draft out of Mater Dei HS in Santa Ana, CA and made his debut at age 22 in 2017. Over nine seasons and 1,004 games with the Rockies, McMahon owns a .240 batting average and .740 OPS with 137 homers and 445 RBI. Defensively, McMahon has logged 696 games at third base, owning a .968 fielding percentage. He's also played 244 games at second base, 70 at first base, seven as a DH, and two at SS. He's played 100 games at third this season (.978 fielding percentage) and manned the hot corner for 152 games in 2024, leading the league in both assists (323) and errors (15). The Yankees will bank on his glove at third base for at least the rest of the season, allowing them to move Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base full-time.
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Ryan McMahon trade: Yankees acquire Rockies third baseman ahead of deadline, reports say
NEW YORK − The MLB trade deadline is days away, but the Yankees are already on the move. The Yankees are acquiring third baseman Ryan McMahon from the Colorado Rockies, according to multiple reports. Third base was one of the Yankees' biggest needs, and McMahon will provide lefty power (though with a lot of strikeouts) and a contract that takes him through the 2027 season. Who did Yankees trade for Ryan McMahon? According to USA TODAY's Bob Nightengale, the Yankees will be sending pitching prospects Griffin Hering and Josh Grosz to Colorado in return. Check back here for more on this breaking news story. This article originally appeared on Ryan McMahon trade: Yankees acquire Rockies third baseman ahead of deadline