With Saturday Night Live‘s season finale looming, Weekend Update host Colin Jost recalled the one time he made co-host Michael Che “genuinely worried” during their brutal joke swaps.
“I don’t know if you noticed, I’m at a little bit of a structural disadvantage,” Jost, 43, said on the New Heights podcast, referencing his skin tone, which is often weaponized by Che, 42, in the swaps. “So it’s harder for me to figure out what to do.”
In the decade-old tradition, each co-host writes jokes that the other must deliver during the season finale. In the past, Che has made Jost insult his wife, Scarlett Johansson, make racially insensitive comments, and nearly say the n-word on air. But just once, Jost got the better of his co-host.
“The time I feel like I got him the most nervous, because he’s such a Kendrick Lamar fan,” Jost said, was “when I started getting him weighing in on the feud, like talking directly to Kendrick.”
“I could tell he was really, really genuinely worried about what I was going to make him say,” he added, grinning.
In the 2024 segment, a visibly uncomfortable Che read Jost’s joke, “Speaking of b---hes. I want to call out the biggest b---h of all: Kendrick Lamar. Or should I say littlest?”
“Your war with Drake may be over, but your war with Michael Che is just beginning,” Che said, laughing nervously. “So, to quote Hamilton, ‘Shoot your shot, playa.’”
“That was pretty well done, man,” he admitted, shaking his head. “I don’t like that one bit.”
Jost, who explained that he and Che go into the segment fully blind to the others’ jokes, said that some jokes have inspired real concern from SNL hosts and his own family.
“There’s really been ones where he made me say a joke, and the host that week came up to me after and was like, ‘Are you OK?’” Jost recalled, laughing, adding that a host “touched my shoulder and was like, ‘He can’t do that to you.’”
“It is thrilling to do, even though it is also terrifying,” he admitted.
One joke even raised his mother’s concern, who became worried as soon as she saw the joke’s accompanying image appear onscreen.
“My family, every year, is very worried for me,” he explained. “A Rosa Parks graphic came up, and my mom was like, ‘I thought our whole family was gonna end. We were gonna have to just shut down the family.’”
His wife, too, has admitted that she’s “terrified” of the yearly swaps.
“We need to go into like, witness protection after that night,” Johansson, 41, joked after the 2024 segment. “I am absolutely terrified we’re gonna be targeted. It’s so bad. I black out for that period of the night. I don’t—I actually don’t remember it.”
Saturday Night Live‘s season 51 finale, hosted by Will Ferrell and musical guest Paul McCartney, will air on May 16.
