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Louise Thomas
Editor
Scarlett Johansson has joked that one Saturday Night Live tradition scared her so much that it made her experience temporary amnesia.
The Fly Me to the Moon actor, 39, has been married to the comedy segment’s co-host Colin Jost for more than four years and has suffered many jokes being made about her on the show.
In one segment, Jost and his fellow presenter Michal Che have an annual “joke swap” where they read jokes written by the other man. Che has historically pranked Jost by tricking him into cold-reading offensive material about his wife, which left Johansson terrified.
Speaking on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Johansson said she “blacked out” during this year’s annual joke swap and can barely remember anything that was said, but knows it was “so bad”.
“We need to go into witness protection after that night,” the Black Widow star said. “I am absolutely terrified we’re gonna be like, targeted. It’s so bad. I black out for that period of the night. I don’t — I actually don’t remember it.”
Jost and Johansson first met back in 2010, when the Lost in Translation actor hosted SNL for the first time. The pair sparked up a relationship in 2017, following Johansson’s divorce from French journalist Romain Dauriac, and announced their engagement in 2019.
In October 2020, the couple tied the knot during an intimate ceremony amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Jost announced they had welcomed their first child, a son named Cosmo, less than a year later.
Back in May, Jost made a joke on the show about artificial intelligence (AI) software stealing Johansson’s voice: “ChatGPT has released a new voice assistant feature inspired by Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in Her,” he said. “Which I’ve never bothered to watch, because without that body, what’s the point of listening?”
“That’s like a tame version,” Johansson said, reflecting on her husband’s material, adding that SNL’s annual joke swap segment is “brutal”.
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“I feel like every year it gets worse, it’s just terrible,” she said.
It comes after Johansson recently made a quip of her own about her comedian husband on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Speaking to the chat show host, the Her star joked Jost makes a small cameo in her forthcoming film Fly Me to the Moon because he’s legally bound to do so.
“Greg Berlanti, who’s our director, is a huge fan of Colin’s. And Colin, like, I think he had to do it because it’s, like, in our prenuptial agreement,” she said.
“If I ask him to do something, he has to be there to support me. He has to be in every one of my films.”
