Amy Schumer’s 3-year-old was hospitalized with respiratory syncytial virus last week while she prepared to host “Saturday Night Live,” the comedian said Sunday.
The Manhattan-born comic said she missed Thursday’s rehearsal for the NBC sketch comedy show when son Gene was admitted to an emergency room amid a surge in cases of the virus that largely affects young children.
“I got to be with him the whole day at the hospital and the beautiful humans at [’Saturday Night Live’] couldn’t have been more supportive,” Schumer, 41, wrote in an Instagram post.
“My son is home and better. The reason this show is so fun to do isn’t actually the performance or the show itself. It’s getting to spend time with the people there. The cast and the writers of course but the people who are behind the scenes making it run smooth are my favorite.”
Describing last week as “the hardest” of her life, Schumer thanked the “SNL” staff and “the doctors and nurses who helped us.”
Commonly referred to as RSV, the virus typically causes cold-like symptoms in adults but can be life-threatening for infants. The United States records about 2.1 million outpatient cases of RSV annually, according to the CDC, but the surge in infections began earlier than normal this year.
Gene is the only child of Schumer and chef Chris Fischer, whom she married in 2018.
Saturday’s episode of “SNL” marked the third time Schumer — a second cousin of Sen. Chuck Schumer — hosted the show, with her previous gigs coming in 2015 and 2018.
Her monologue included a jab at rapper Kanye West, who lost partnerships with Adidas and other brands over a series of anti-Semitic comments. Her joke about West came when she spoke about her husband’s diagnosis with autism spectrum disorder.
“It used to be called Asperger’s but then they found out, this is true, that Dr. Asperger had, like, Nazi ties, Kanye,” Schumer quipped.
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