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:
