Scarlett Johansson felt like she was “going to faint” when her husband Colin Jost made a roast beef joke aimed at her private parts on Saturday Night Live last December.
During an end-of-year joke swap on a segment of Weekend Update, Jost and his co-host Michael Che participated in their semiannual tradition, in which the pair read surprise gags the other has prepared in secret.
To mark the occasion late last year, Che handed Jost his most off-colour joke yet, which the comedian read while Johansson watched backstage. “I want to dedicate this next joke to my boo, Scarlett Johansson. Costco has removed the roast beef sandwich from its menu. But I ain’t trippin’. I’ve been eating roast beef every night since my wife had the kid,” Jost quipped.
Amid gasps from the crowd, cameras cut to Johansson’s shocked expression.
“They were waiting for me to react,” Johansson says in a new interview with InStyle. “I was like, ‘I think I’m going to faint.’”
Johansson was given a heads up that Che had written a vagina joke for Jost to read on air, but didn’t think it would be about her anatomy.
“I was like, ‘I mean, it’s a vagina joke, how bad could it be?’ And then as soon as the photo came up, I was like, ‘No! No, Michael!’”
Johansson said her “experience of it was so funny,” but called the wisecrack “so gross.”
“It was so vulgar,” Johansson tells the outlet. “I just can’t believe that they went there. I was like — it was so gross. It was really gross … And, like, old-school gross.”
In January, Jost told Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon that Johansson “was genuinely so shocked” even though the show’s production team told her a vagina joke was coming.
“They were like, ‘Hey, would you be OK if Michael made a little, like, kind of vagina joke at some point?’” Jost recalled. “She was like, ‘Sure, you know, whatever, I’m open to it.’”
But Jost said he didn’t know what the joke was going to be.
“The graphic came up for Arby’s and Scarlett is backstage like, ‘Oh my god, that’s what it is,’” the comedian told Fallon. “I’m in trouble with a lot of people.”
In her chat with InStyle, Johansson said she was overwhelmed by all the cameras that swarmed around her to catch her reaction.
“The fact that it took on a full To Catch a Predator-style reveal or whatever,” she says, referencing a segment from Dateline, “that was so intense.”
Johansson knew the show’s producers were trying to catch her jaw-dropping reaction, hoping the moment would go viral.
“All of a sudden, it was like a whole bunch of people holding up lights, and a guy with a video camera,” she says. “They were waiting for me to react. I felt insane.”
Jost and Johansson started dating after she hosted SNL in 2017 and were married there years later. In 2021, the pair welcomed their son, Cosmo.
Johansson is also mom to daughter Rose, 10, whom she shares with her ex-husband Romain Dauriac.
The ongoing bit in which Che has Jost tease his wife has gone on for years.
During the Season 49 finale last May, Che had his longtime screen partner blushing when he read aloud a crack aimed at 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).
Afterwards, Johansson, who has hosted SNL six times, told Kelly Clarkson that she “blacked out” during the routine.
“We need to go into like, witness protection after that night,” Johansson said. “It is brutal. It is brutal. I feel like every year it gets worse. It’s just terrible. 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.”
Earlier last 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 in December 2023. “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.”