While many “Saturday Night Live” viewers look forward to the recurring “joke swap” segment on the show, Scarlett Johansson dreads it.
On “SNL,” Colin Jost, who is married to Johansson, has a tradition with Michael Che during “Weekend Update” in which they give each other jokes to read live that they have not seen ahead of time. During the skit, both Jost and Che usually burst into uncontrollable laughter watching the other read some of the show’s most obscene jokes.
For the Season 49 finale in May, the joke swap returned and Che, who usually takes the opportunity to trick Jost into mocking his wife, wrote a joke that made Jost say, “Oh, God,” the minute he saw it.
“ChatGPT has released a new voice assistant feature inspired by Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in ‘Her,’ which I never bothered to watch because without that body, what’s the point of listening?” Jost said before covering his face in his hands.
So how did his wife feel about that quip? Well, during the “Fly Me to the Moon” actor’s recent appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” she reacted to the joke and shared her thoughts on the bi-annual segment.
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When host Kelly Clarkson mentioned the joke swap, Johansson said, “Oh, God” in the same tone as her husband.
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After re-watching the clip, Johansson confirmed that the skit is real and her husband is completely in the dark about what Che has written for him until the quips appear on the cue cards.
“And that’s like a tame version if you guys have ever seen the joke swap,” Johansson said.
Clarkson agreed and said she couldn’t show any of the more risqué jokes on her daytime talk show.
Johansson described the panicked feeling she experiences when she knows the joke swap is on the way.
“We need (to), like, go into witness protection after that night,” she said. “Like, I am absolutely terrified we’re going to be, like, targeted. It’s so bad. I black out for that period of the night. I actually don’t remember it.”
The “Lost in Translation” star then revealed how she responded the moment she heard the joke during the recent finale.
“As soon as the picture came up, I was like…” she said before gasping, screaming and shielding her face with her hands.
“It is brutal,” she continued. “I feel like every year it gets worse. It’s just terrible. It’s painful…I actually don’t remember that segment.”
“And they do it at Christmas, too, it’s like a little gift to each other,” she added, laughing.
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