Comedy Conduit: Colin Jost
SNL's "Weekend Update" host is the write guy to make boundary-stretching comedy great again
Whether audiences and critics found Colin Jost funny after he replaced Seth Myers on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” or thought he had a very punchable face, it’s beyond debate that he’s half-responsible for drawing the long-running segment’s biggest laughs since the late Norm McDonald’s era. He and Michael Che struck a chord when they started writing jokes for each other that would have to be read on air, without the teller having prior knowledge of the joke’s content.
Thus, an ongoing game of one-upmanship was launched, with each comedian seeing how far the boundaries of standard and practices, and perhaps good taste, can be stretched before breaking. If it’s not humor without a net, it comes close. Co-head writer Jost was the write guy in the right place at the right time to help send the SNL pendulum in a critically acclaimed direction again.
Jost joined the show as a writer in 2005, a job he dreamed of while growing up on Staten Island. Jost attended a private Catholic School with a three-hour commute before attending Harvard alongside dormmate Pete Buttigieg. He wrote for and became president venerable humor publication Harvard Lampoon, which includes Conan O’Brien, B.J. Novak and screenwriter Douglas Kenney (Animal House, Caddyshack) among its alumni.
The student of Russian and British literature graduated cum laude in 2004 then worked for the Staten Island Advance, which he had made comically edged contributions to as a teenager, and Nickelodeon. It wasn’t long before his ambition led him to send a portfolio to SNL. A year out of college he had his dream job.
Jost became co-host of Weekend Update in 2014. Like McDonald, a strong influence, he seemed slightly out of step with the rest of the cast. He looked clean-cut and camera-ready, drawing more on a sharply honed dry wit than improv experience. Once he got through the awkward phase most new cast members experience, he found his groove.
Now he scores points with critics for impressions of Buttigieg and George Santos. He also scored points with Scarlett Johansson upon meeting her in 2017, who he married in 2019 and has built a successful and private family life with. She does become the butt, so to speak, of “Weekend Update” joke swaps when Che gleefully writes material about her for Jost to helplessly repeat on air.
Jost segued into writing his own material for the stand-up stage and spends a good portion of this summer touring clubs and theaters. His first book of humor, A Very Punchable Face, was released in 2020 and is a good conduit directly into the way Jost’s mind works. He’s funny, self-deprecating, non-abrasive and aware of his audience. He writes because it’s how he best communicates.
He states, in the book’s opening paragraph, that verbalizing his thoughts causes anxiety where writing does not. There is no fear when it comes to being creative: “The act of writing allows my brain to function in a different way. I can write and not be afraid of what I’m going to say.”
Colin Jost and Friends at Resorts World: July 20
a version of this story was published in the July 14 edition of Las Vegas Magazine