Colin Jost To Succeed Seth Meyers As ‘Weekend Update’ Co-Anchor On ‘SNL’
EXCLUSIVE: Lorne Michaels has picked Seth Meyers‘ successor behind the Weekend Update desk of Saturday Night Live. In an SNL tradition, it is NBC sketch show’s head writer Colin Jost, who will join Cecily Strong as co-anchor on March 1. Meyers’ SNL farewell is slated for February 1. Jost was one of the youngest writers ever to join SNL in 2005 when he was 22 — fresh out of Harvard where he was president of the Harvard Lampoon. He was named head writer in 2012. Jost is the third consecutive SNL head writer to take on an Weekend Update co-anchor role following Tina Fey and Meyers. Some of the recent viral sketches he has written on the show include the We Did Stop music video about the government shutdown featuring Miley Cyrus and the 50 Shades Of Grey screen test. He also has written for recurring characters on Weekend Update including Drunk Uncle, The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party (who was plated by Strong) and Second-hand news correspondent Anthony Crispino.
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Jost has shared in SNL writing staff’s three WGA Awards, a Peabody Award, and eight Emmy nominations. He has performed stand-up on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show, and the Just for Laughs comedy festivals in Montreal and Chicago. Jost, repped by CAA and 3 Arts, also wrote and co-stars in the upcoming Paramount movie Staten Island Summer, based on his days as a lifeguard.
Weekend Update has become arguably the biggest star-making machine on television. Since 2000, it has produced two late-night talk show hosts (Fallon, Meyers) and two TV series and film stars in Fey and Amy Poehler. Among the four of them, they have hosted the Emmys (Fallon), the Golden Globes (Fey & Poehler) and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (Meyers).
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