Throughout Saturday Night Live’s 51-season run, the sketch series has done quite a few memorable recurring bits. Whether it’s returning characters and/or returning sketches, some of them just never get old. What has perhaps turned into one of the best traditions on SNL is the annual joke swap on Weekend Update, which is headlined by Colin Jost and Michael Che. And, now, I've just learned how it all started.
Longtime Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che began the fan-favorite Joke Swap segment during Season 44 back in 2018. Since then, they have done it for almost every Christmas show and season finale. The segment sees the pair give each other jokes that the other has not seen, and the results are usually both hilarious and cringey in the best way. Che recently appeared on Mike Birbiglia’s An Amateur Therapy Session and revealed that this tradition began with jokes that would bomb during dress rehearsals:
So, like the bit started because we had all these jokes that we love, that would kill us in the room, and then we tell them at dress [rehearsal], and it would just — we would get iced. I remember one time, I don't know if it was me or Jost, but I remember we told the joke and it was just so quiet and one lady just yelled, ‘No!’ …. And we were like, ‘No? Wow. OK.’
Dress rehearsal is very important, because it’s then that the final decisions on what’s cut and what gets moved around are made. Based on Che's comments, it sounds like some jokes just did not land for him and Jost during that time. Nevertheless, the two found a way to turn lemons into lemonade, and that apparently went down when some famous SNL alums came to host:
I think it was like Tina [Fey] and Amy [Poehler] or somebody was hosting, and they came on the Update desk and we was like, ‘For Christmas, let's do something where we give each other a joke.’ And we give each other a joke. Here’s a joke that bombed that you love, and you get to say it for Christmas. It was the same jokes that died, but just letting the audience know that these are bad jokes made them laugh hysterically, just the context changed.
The rest, as they say, is TV history. Honestly, now, it's hard to remember a time without Joke Swap. While it sucks that some jokes that went well during the table read completely bombed at dress rehearsal, I am so happy Che and Jost had the idea recycle them for what's become an excellent segment. Che went on to explain how all of that solidified the actual Joke Swap idea for the show and he shed some light on one of the reasons why he finds it tricky to write quips for it:
And then we was like, ‘Oh, let’s do it again. Jost came up, and he’s like, ‘Let's do it again, but like let's do it blind. You don't know when I'm going to tell, you know what I mean? Like you tell me what to say, and then I tell you what to say and then let's see who….’ So I'm thinking he's trying to trap me. So I'm like, ‘Oh, this guy's trying to trick me and get me to say something terrible. I'll show him.’ So I wrote new ones that were horrific, and we get to air and he wasn't trying to trap me at all. It was just a regular thing. So I went so hard I overkilled, and that’s kind of been the rhythm of it.
Of course, one of the best parts about the Joke Swap is seeing how far Che and Jost will go, and it’s usually been Jost that gets the short end of the stick with jokes about race or his wife, Scarlett Johansson, while Che hilariously acts as shocked. Still, Jost has been turning up the heat lately, and he even had Johansson on Weekend Update to roast Che when she hosted the Season 50 finale. All in all, I never know what to expect with the Joke Swap, and that’s what makes it fun.
When Jost and Che eventually leave Saturday Night Live, it’s going to be weird not having the Joke Swap on Weekend Update. It’s always possible the next anchors at the desk might continue the tradition, but it's hard for me to see anyone doing it better than them. As of now, there isn’t any word of either of them departing ahead of Season 52, so hopefully we won’t have to say goodbye to them and Joke Swap just yet.
The 52nd season of SNL is set to premiere sometime this fall amid the 2026 TV schedule. In the meantime, all seasons are available to stream with a Peacock subscription.
