Colin Jost to Host 'Pop Culture Jeopardy!' — But Is He Saying Goodbye to 'SNL'?
Colin was named host of 'Pop Culture Jeopardy!', but the real question is: how will he juggle that with his 'SNL' duties?
Updated Aug. 2 2024, 10:14 a.m. ET
The prospect of Colin Jost leaving Saturday Night Live is enough to panic fans. After all, the comedian has been serving as head writer of SNL since 2017 and has racked up five Writers Guild of America Awards during his tenure on the NBC sketch show.
As Colin's star continues to rise, his calendar is filling up faster than you can say "Weekend Update." From his stint as an NBC commentator during the 2024 Olympics in Tahiti to being named the host of a brand-new show, Colin is everywhere. With all these new gigs coinciding with the upcoming SNL season, fans are starting to grow concerned: Could he be leaving Studio 8H? Here's what we know.
Is Colin Jost leaving ‘SNL’?
Fear not, SNL devotees! It looks like Colin will be delivering punchlines and political zingers on Saturday nights for a while longer. Despite being tapped to host Pop Culture Jeopardy!, a new show coming to Amazon Prime Video, Colin hasn't publicly announced any plans to leave SNL. According to the New York Post, the Jeopardy! spinoff is set to begin production in August 2024.
“We’re thrilled to welcome the multi-talented Colin Jost as the host of Pop Culture Jeopardy!,” said Lauren Anderson, head of brand and content innovation at Amazon MGM Studios. She praised his “wry affability and pop culture fluency” as qualities that make him the "perfect host" for the upcoming show.
Unless Colin has other plans up his sleeve, like leaving SNL right before the start of its 50th season premiering on Sept. 28, 2024, it seems he'll just have to master his scheduling skills to juggle all his gigs.
Colin Jost mentioned leaving 'SNL' in his memoir ' Very Punchable Face'.
Although Colin doesn't seem ready to leave his SNL castmates just yet, it could happen down the road. He's mentioned the possibility before. In his 2020 memoir, A Very Punchable Face, Colin wrote that he’s “preparing mentally to leave SNL in the near future.”
“It just felt right as I was writing,” he later explained to The Washington Post. “I think what I wanted to open up about was just that fear of leaving and the fear of letting go of something that has been so important in my life.”
“It’s scary thinking about leaving,” he added. “I guess, on some level, I needed to face that or think about it, and that’s how I ended up there. It wasn’t really with a specific date in mind or a timeline in mind. It really was the emotional process of thinking about it.”
But Colin downplayed his eventual SNL departure during an Oct. 15 appearance on the now-defunct The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
"I don’t have a real timeline, I just meant like I started to potentially psychologically brace for the concept of leaving, which I hadn’t really done,” he told Ellen. "I don’t really know. Certainly, quarantine makes you appreciate having any job. And [I’m] very much appreciating having friends you get to work with and enjoy seeing."
Is Colin Jost married to Scarlett Johansson?
Colin and Scarlett got engaged in May 2019 after two years of dating and tied the knot in October 2020. The couple welcomed their first child together, a son named Cosmo, in August 2021, just under a year after their wedding.
Colin was also cast in the 'Tom and Jerry' movie!
While we're certainly hearing Colin's name more frequently in the media these days, he's been branching out in terms of his career. He starred in the family comedy Tom and Jerry, which debuted in February 2021.
He starred alongside Chloe Grace Moretz, Michael Peña, and Ken Jeong in the movie, which dives into the origins of the cat-and-mouse rivalry. With such versatility, it’s clear Colin can do it all, which is why we have faith he won’t be ditching SNL for his new gigs.
