Scarlett Johansson says she ‘blacked out’ during hubby’s ‘SNL’ joke

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Scarlett Johansson is “terrified” by Saturday Night Live’s annual joke swap tradition, which finds her husband, Colin Jost, trading jokes with his Weekend Update co-host Michael Che.

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The ongoing routine features Jost and Che reading surprise gags the other has prepared in secret.

During the Season 49 finale in May, Che had his longtime screen partner blushing when he read aloud a wisecrack about his spouse.

“ChatGBT has released a new voice assistant feature inspired by Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in Her,” Jost began. “Which I’ve never bothered to watch, because without that body, what’s the point of listening.”

The 2013 dramedy follows Joaquin Phoenix as a man who falls in love with his female AI, voiced by Johansson (who never appears onscreen).

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Johansson, who has hosted SNL six times, told Kelly Clarkson this week that she “blacked out” during this year’s segment.

“We need to go into like, witness protection after that night,” Johansson joked. “Like, I am absolutely terrified we’re gonna be like, targeted. It’s so bad. I black out for that period of the night. I don’t — I actually don’t remember it.”

As soon as she saw her face come up on the screen, she started screaming.

“It is brutal. It is brutal. I feel like every year it gets worse. It’s just terrible,” she said. “I mean, I really do, I actually don’t remember that segment. I fully blacked out. And they do it at Christmas, too. It’s like a little gift to each other.”

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Earlier in the season, Jost was tricked into reading another quip directed at Johansson.

“New York State now allows movie theatres to sell alcohol,” Jost read during an episode last December. “Which is how I’m finally able to enjoy my wife’s little art movies,” he said as a picture of Johansson in Marvel’s Black Widow flashed onscreen.

“I’m kidding, honey,” he continued, embarrassingly. “I love all of your movies. And If you asked me, you’re an even better Black Widow than Coretta Scott King.”

Back in 2020, Jost also poked fun at the casting controversies over Johansson being hired to lead the big screen adaptation of the Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell and the announcement that she was considering playing a transgender man in Rub & Tug.

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“It was announced that Creed singer Scott Stapp will play Frank Sinatra in an upcoming movie. But the good news is, Sammy Davis Jr. will be played by Scarlett Johansson,” Jost said.

When she spoke to Clarkson in 2021, Johansson said that most nights she feels “a slight underwhelming panic” watching the show.

“I now rarely watch (SNL) without having a sense of … not overwhelming panic, just like a slight underwhelming panic because I just feel like at any moment something’s going to fall apart,” Johansson said during a July 2021 episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show (per Us Weekly). 

Johansson and Jost met when she hosted SNL back in 2006. The pair started dating in 2017 and wed in 2020. They welcomed their first son, Cosmo, in 2021 (Johansson is also mom to daughter Rose Dorothy, whom she shares with former husband Romain Dauriac).

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