Even if you watch Saturday Night Live until the very end of each episode and watch the closing credits roll up the screen, you might not notice certain changes unless you’re really looking closely. Splitsider’s Megh Wright was one of those people with a discerning eye, catching this not-unimportant change to the SNL writing staff during this past weekend’s episode: Colin Jost was no longer credited as a head writer.
Screen cap via Splitsider.
Jost has been on the show’s writing staff since 2005, when he was just 22 years old. He moved up to writing supervisor four years later and was eventually promoted to head writer (joining Seth Meyers) in 2012 for season 38. When Meyers left in 2014, Jost stayed on as a head writer with Bryan Tucker and Rob Klein joining him.
The other big change for Jost in 2014, of course, was becoming an anchor on the Weekend Update segment. He was initially paired with Cecily Strong during the 2013-14 season, until she was replaced by Michael Che the following season, allowing her to focus on acting in sketches. Jost and Che haven’t always been favorites among viewers, coming across to some as smug and self-satisfied — not to mention having replaced the popular Meyers and Strong.
But as our Jeremy Klumpp has written frequently in his SNL recaps, the Weekend Update team continues to grow more comfortable and confident with their material, and is consistently the best part of the show. Evidently, that growing success had something to do with Jost no longer being a head writer at SNL.
After Splitsider’s post was published, the natural question to ask was whether or not Jost had been demoted. Was Lorne Michaels unhappy with his work, deciding to move him to join the rest of the writing staff? Or was this Jost’s choice?
As it turns out, Jost was the one who made the call. According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Seth Abramovitch (and confirming Splitsider’s speculation) Jost made the decision so that he could focus more on writing material for Weekend Update. We’re in the middle of election season and the upcoming presidential campaign figures to provide plenty of material for the SNL writing staff. And as the show’s presumed news segment, Weekend Update is an extremely important part of that. So added attention from Jost to make Update’s jokes consistently strong and sharp certainly makes sense.
However, Vanity Fair‘s Joanna Robinson points out that Jost stepping down as a head writer isn’t a move that just happened before last weekend’s SNL. He actually hasn’t been credited as a head writer since last season’s finale, so the transition has apparently been taking place for months.
Another interesting tidbit from Abramovitch’s THR piece for those who love behind-the-scenes info about SNL: While Weekend Update has its own writing team, the show also has a number of selected comedians on an email list (everyone is blind-copied, so no one knows who else is being emailed) who can submit jokes specifically for that segment.
If one of their jokes makes it on air, the comedians are paid $100. I wonder what’s the most someone has pulled in during a particular week or month with those outside submissions? And if enough of their jokes make it, is the decision made to add them to the writing staff?
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