In a turn that we can only imagine will lead Michael Che to launch a vitriol-filled Instagram Stories attack on reality itself, Colin Jost has suggested that he might soon step down from his 15-years-and-counting tenure atop the Saturday Night Live pulpit. Per Variety, early galley proofs from Jost’s new memoir, A Very Punchable Face, include his musings on whether he might soon be departing the series, where he’s served in a variety of roles—including writer, performer, co- head writer, Weekend Update host, and all around symbol of generic white guy energy—ever since he joined the series directly out of his time at Harvard.
These being early proofs and all, there’s no real way of knowing whether Jost’s comments—in which he muses on sticking around at least through the 2020 election, after which his impression of old dorm-mate Pete Buttigieg will hopefully no longer be in much demand—will actually appear in the final product. At the same time, NBC has issued a blanket “No comment” on the hypothetical departure, which is fair enough, because it doesn’t sound like Jost has said anything definitive about leaving just yet, and “When is so-and-so finally going to leave SNL?” has become a high-profile talking point for a number of cast members in recent years. (You can do it, Kenan! Leave the nest!)
Jost has been co-head writer of Saturday Night Live since 2017, and before that, from 2012 to 2015. He’s also been anchoring the Weekend Update desk since 2014, giving him the second-longest run in the role in the show’s history, after Seth Meyers, from whom he inherited the job. Per the galleys, he is “preparing mentally” for leaving a tenure that’s seen SNL weather the same accusations of having turned to crap it’s been fielding since pretty much the second episode ever aired, albeit with more of a focus on the show’s increasingly milquetoast centrist leanings. Jost, in particular, has come under fire over the years for having the facial condition noted in his memoir’s title, as well as his tendency to do things like suggest that poorer, non-Manhattan-private-school-attending New Yorkers were ungrateful for not liking the idea of Amazon dropping its massive and disruptive headquarters on the city’s infrastructure. He’s supposedly hoping to focus his energy on larger projects; he previously wrote 2015's State Island Summer.