Most Controversial ‘Saturday Night Live’ Monologues Ever

Even with Saturday Night Live’s history of offensive sketches, we can’t imagine the NBC show’s scribes were involved in any of the show’s most infamous monologues.

Would-be SNL cast member Shane Gillis just made the list with a reviled joke in his opener on October 10, adding another scandal-baiting speech onto a worst-of list decades long. Here are our selections for the most controversial of the show’s monologues so far.

1979: Milton Berle targets women, gays, Puerto Ricans, and Arabs

When Berle a.k.a. Mr. Television hosted the SNL in 1979, he made one degrading joke after another as he opened his episode. “His monologue was a collection of dusty old bits that attempted to offend women, homosexuals, Puerto Ricans, and Arabs,” observed Far Out Magazine. (The SNL Transcripts website describes the audience’s corresponding laughter as “soft,” “embarrassed,” and “lukewarm.”)

Former cast member Laraine Newman told Cracked in 2024 that SNL creator Lorne Michaels won’t allow Berle’s SNL episode to be shown again — “He was a pill, that guy,” she said of the comedian — and insinuated to LateNighter the following year that Berle the worst host of her tenure on the show.

1992: Joe Pesci says he would have smacked Sinéad O’Connor

In 1992, a week after Sinéad O’Connor shredded a photo of Pope John Paul II during her SNL performance to protest sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, Pesci hosted the show and criticized her action. But then he even said he would have hit O’Connor in that moment.

“I mean, why should I let it bother me, right?” the Goodfellas actor began, per The Independent. “It wasn’t my show. But I’ll tell you one thing, she was very lucky it wasn’t my show, because if it was my show, I would have gave her such a smack.”

Pesci’s comment got him in hot water again when it resurfaced in 2023, following O’Connor’s death. “Getting applause for threatening a woman is crazy,” one person wrote on Twitter (now X). “This is so hideous,” said another.

1994: Martin Lawrence’s monologue gets him banned from NBC

Lawrence’s 1994 monologue originally contained “a commentary on what he considers the decline in standards of feminine hygiene in this country,” as SNL said in a voiceover appended to a version of his diatribe edited for reruns. “In summary, Martin feels, or felt at the time, that the failure of many young women to bathe thoroughly is a serious problem that demands our attention. He explores this problem, citing numerous examples from his personal experience, and ends by proposing several imaginative solutions. It was a frank and lively presentation, and nearly cost us all our jobs.”

Rumor had it Lawrence’s hygiene rant got him banned from SNL, but the comedian later revealed he was actually barred from appearing on NBC for a while, according to Vice. For example, the network canceled his appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno the following month, decreeing it was “inappropriate for him to be on any of our shows.”

2015: Louis C.K. jokes about child molesters

Before C.K.’s sexual misconduct got him canceled, the comedian joked in his 2015 SNL episode about child molesters like the one he said lived in his neighborhood in the 1970s. “He didn’t like me — I felt a little bad,” C.K. said, per The Hollywood Reporter.

He also wondered why child molesters would commit such a crime, saying, “From their point of view, it must be amazing, for them to risk so much.”

On Twitter, one user called it the “unfunniest, most offensive SNL monologue.” Another simply wrote, “[My] heart aches for humanity.”

2017: Larry David jokes about the Holocaust

In 2017, SNL viewers wished David would have curbed his enthusiasm for jokes about the Holocaust. “I’ve always been obsessed with women, and I’ve always wondered: If I’d grown up in Poland when Hitler came to power and was sent to a concentration camp, would I still be checking out women in the camp? I think I would,” the Curb star joked in his monologue, per Variety. “Of course, the problem is there are no good opening lines in a concentration camp. ‘How’s it going? They treating you OK? You know, if we ever get out of here, I’d love to take you out for some latkes.’”

The audience groaned at the joke, and social media users did, too. “Not feeling Larry David’s concentration camp jokes,” one Twitter user wrote. “Nothing about the Holocaust will ever be funny. #majorfail #notfunny.”

2018: Kanye West ends an episode with an impromptu rant

West wasn’t even hosting SNL in 2018 when he went off-script and gave a politically charged monologue at the end of the episode. The rapper, that episode’s musical guest, donned a MAGA hat and defended his support of Donald Trump amid accusations Trump is racist, as People reported at the time. West said that if he were concerned about racism, he would have left the country long ago.

He also claimed that the “Democratic plan” was to “take the fathers out the homes and promote welfare.”

Ego Nwodim, an SNL cast member at the time, recalled in the documentary Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music being frustrated to share the stage with West at that moment. “I was like, ‘I don’t wanna be up here for this, and I don’t agree with this, and standing up here looks like I’m standing in solidarity,’” she said.

2023: Woody Harrelson seemingly pushes a COVID-19 conspiracy

Harrelson had viewers outraged in 2023 when his monologue included what seemed like conspiracy theory about the COVID-19 pandemic.

In that bit, the Cheers alum said that he’d read “the craziest script” in which “the biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes. And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.”

Vanity Fair’s Karen Valby also decried the joke, writing, “Taking the stage to float conspiracy theories disguised as provocative humor is both intellectually dishonest and tedious. Who invited this guy for a fifth time?

2026: Shane Gillis says women dress like whores at the gym

Gillis, who was infamously fired from SNL days after being hired as a cast member when his past racist and homophobic comments resurfaced, got the show in trouble again in 2026 when he spoke ill of both sex workers and female gym-goers. “I haven’t been to the gym in so long,” he said in his monologue. “I didn’t know women just dressed like whores now.”

And at the end of his monologue, Gillis lamented that with his receding hairline, the only hairstyles available to him are “gay” or “Adolf Hitler,” adding, “You’re either gay or you’re Hitler. And isn’t that where we’re at as a country?”

Adding to a chorus of online protests, Salon’s Kelly McClure wrote, “Happy, successful, confident, well-loved comedians are creative and secure enough to reach out and up for their material, not straight into their own a***s. There’s a difference between being a ‘controversial’ comic and appealing to the lowest common denominator.”