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Comedian Shane Gillis’s opening monologue as host at the Espys awards ceremony went over awkwardly in front of some of the biggest names in sports on Wednesday night.
Early on, he called out various famous faces in the Dolby Theatre crowd in Los Angeles, including retired WNBA star Diana Taurasi, who received the Icon Award later in the evening. Gillis asked the crowd to “give it up Taurasi”, but only after he had called the six-time Olympic champion “Deanna.” The camera showed an unsmiling Taurasi shaking her head. Gillis quickly caught his mistake, saying, “My bad on that.”
Gillis then moved on to another basketball star, Caitlin Clark, who wasn’t at the ceremony as she deals with an injury ahead of this weekend’s WNBA All-Star game.
“When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she’s going to work at a Waffle House so she can continue doing what she loves most: fist fighting Black women,” he joked. While some in the audience laughed, others appeared uncomfortable.
Gillis continued on for 10 minutes, drawing a scattering of boos at one point, with jokes about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
“Donald Trump wants to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn. The last time he staged a fight in DC, Mike Pence almost died,” Gillis said. He then turned to Epstein, saying: “There was supposed to be an Epstein joke here, but I guess it got deleted.” Last week, the justice department and the FBI announced that a review of the case files had confirmed that Epstein had killed himself, and there was no list of his clients to be made public.
Gillis’ performance drew mixed reviews on social media, with some praising his criticism of Trump, while others criticized the racially charged reference to Clark at a time when WNBA players have been the subject of online bigotry. Gillis was dropped from the Saturday Night Live cast in 2019 after podcast footage surfaced of him making racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments. Gillis apologized at the time, saying in a statement he was “a comedian who pushes boundaries” but who “sometimes missed”. He returned to guest host the show in 2024.
Gillis was on safer ground when he took a light jab at reigning NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Canadian star, who won the NBA title with the Oklahoma City Thunder in June, has attracted criticism for drawing fouls during games. He smiled when Gillis said: “SGA is here. Everybody sitting around him is in foul trouble.”
Gillis also got a good reception for a joke about former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson. “A bookie is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend before bedtime,” said Gillis of the 73-year-old.
Before he ended his monologue, a smiling Gillis said, “I see a lot of you don’t like me and that’s OK. That’s it for me. That went about exactly how we all thought it was going to go. I don’t know why this happened.”
Gilgeous-Alexander and Simone Biles were named as best male and female athletes once the ceremony got under way. Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder to the franchise’s first title in Oklahoma City while also leading the NBA in scoring. “It’s a dream come true and for dreams to come true it takes a village,” he said, thanking his wife, parents, brother and others. “Those names probably don’t mean much but to me they mean everything.”
Biles, an 11-time Olympic medalist, also claimed the night’s first award, best championship performance for her efforts at the Paris Games. She won three golds and a silver at last summer’s Olympics. “That was very unexpected, especially in a category of all men,” Biles said after beating Stephen Curry, Freddie Freeman and Rory McIlroy to the championship performance award.
Biles’ Olympic teammate, Suni Lee, won the best comeback award for overcoming two rare kidney diseases to help the US win team gold in Paris. She brought one of her doctors to the show.
English (US)