When “Saturday Night Live” cast member Cecily Strong found out she had a new “Weekend Update” co-anchor, she reached out to him, excitedly. Turns out, she knew more than he did.
“She texted, ‘Two brunettes are gonna be doing “Weekend Update” next year!’ ” says co-anchor Colin Jost. “And I’m like, wait — is one of those brunettes me?”
That uncertainty would be the least of his challenges.
Jost, a 32-year-old Staten Island native hired by “SNL” as a writer in 2005, joined the “Update” desk in March, and he and Strong anchored eight segments together this season. Critics were, well, critical: The review site Hitfix wrote in late April that Jost was a “pale shadow” of predecessor Seth Meyers. Gothamist wrote at season’s end that Jost “has been a work in progress, to put it gently.”
To be fair, there were some bright spots — and Jost is determined to make things better.
“I don’t feel like what I’ve done so far is a full realization of who I am,” says Jost. “There’s a lot to figure out in the beginning, and your personality starts coming out the more you do it.”
Jost, who headlines a stand-up gig at Caroline’s Thursday to Saturday, also has to juggle his job as co-head writer of “SNL,” which wasn’t easy this past season with seven new cast members.
“Even when you have two or three [new people], it’s challenging. You want to learn their voices so you can write for [them],” he says. “When you have so many people … you don’t get as much time to spend with the actors.”
Jost says next season, viewers will see more of who he really is.
He points to a segment from May, where he announced “Breaking Nudes” — the latter word meant to sound like “News” — and showed a video clip of naked men break dancing.
“It was [presented in the sort of] genuine way I would interact with Cecily in real life, which is for me to try one of the dumbest things I could do, and for her to stare me down, like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ”