Che and Jost turned cruel shock jokes into friendship

On “Weekend Update,” Michael Che and Colin Jost have built a recurring ritual: they swap crass, offensive jokes they know the other is forced to read cold. The comedy is engineered to make discomfort the punchline—yet the story behind it points to something so

For Michael Che, the surprise wasn’t that the joke landed badly during dress rehearsal. It was that the same material could become funny once the audience was made fully aware just how awful it was.

Che described the moment in an interview with comedian Mike Birbiglia: an “Update” joke they’d written had bombed in rehearsal. and Che recalled how “one groaner was greeted with a woman loudly saying ‘no.’” When Che and Colin Jost later decided to recycle those jokes so the other would have to deliver them without seeing the material ahead of time. Che expected disaster. Instead, he said telling the audience they knew the jokes were in bad taste “made them laugh hysterically.”.

Che’s reading of the joke on-screen—then stretching past the line into a performance that looks like genuine disbelief—has become the engine of the whole bit. During last night’s episode of “Saturday Night Live. ” Che delivered what the piece describes as “even by the standards of shocking Michael Jackson jokes” an exceptionally awful line: “Michael Jackson did nothing wrong. ” Che said. Then he went further: “He was right to molest all those kids.”.

And when Che didn’t stop there—declaring, “They were lucky. I would have paid him to do it. And I did!. That’s right. when I was 10 years old. Michael Jackson molested me. and the only thing it gave me was a fetish for middle-aged white women.”—he framed it as if the crowd was supposed to be startled by the words coming out of his mouth.

He finished with the almost aside-like line, “That is not why I have that.”

The point, Che said, wasn’t simply to shock viewers. It was to create a situation where the discomfort of the joke teller becomes the real gag—because Che and Jost aren’t reading material they agree with or even fully predict. The tradition, as described, is that each man writes “Weekend Update” material for the other to deliver cold.

That also means the stakes feel immediate. Che said he got worried that Jost would spring a surprise on him. so he “wrote new ones that were horrific.” The swap became a pattern. evolving into a “biannual tradition. ” and the story of how it survives is wrapped up in how their delivery makes the cruelty look almost theatrical—engineered so the audience understands exactly how far the line is being pushed. and why.

The piece points to highlights over the years. including Jost getting Che to call Kendrick Lamar “the biggest bitch of them all” during the height of his feud with Drake. It also includes Che writing a joke about Jost’s wife. Scarlett Johansson. that went so far that Che later apologized to her on air.

Still, the mechanism keeps working. The shock value helps the jokes go viral, the piece says, but there’s another reason the ritual has endured: the men are reportedly building something out of trust.

After working together for a decade. Che and Jost “understand each other” on “an artistic and personal level. ” the piece describes. Che’s writing is presented as a way of leaning into what Jost can counter with—playacting the kind of persona Jost thinks will make Che uncomfortable. like material framed around racist or offensive premises. including a line Che was made to recite about the Oscar-winning film Sinners: “A Black vampire is just like a white vampire. except the only thing it sucks dry is the welfare state.”.

Jost, in turn, is described as loving to make Che look like a “louche sexual deviant,” with the Jackson joke offered as an example.

In the Birbiglia interview. Che added another explanation for why this kind of humor survives public scrutiny: people fear getting in trouble for laughing at jokes they already know are wrong. The answer. he said. is to give them permission—permission that comes from Che and Jost openly performing the discomfort rather than hiding behind it.

That feeling of engineered permission landed even harder in the broader cultural mood described in the piece. It places the latest joke swap just after Netflix’s roast of Kevin Hart. which it characterizes as filled with “nasty. not-all-that-winky exchanges.” One back-and-forth it highlights came between Shane Gillis and Chelsea Handler: Gillis cracked about Handler partying with Jeffrey Epstein. and Handler returned fire by bringing up Gillis’s history of telling racist jokes.

The piece says that environment didn’t feel like the sort of playful mutual riffing Jost and Che create. It describes the room as looking anything but fraternal—filled with people “who despised one another” and who wanted to prove they were the “edgiest and most callous” in the room.

In contrast. Jost and Che’s escalation is presented as coming from “deep affection.” The piece describes Jost being made to joke about a new album by Ye (formerly Kanye West): “Please try to separate the art from the artist. and remember that Ye can make awful music and still be right about Hitler.” At the end of “Weekend Update. ” he added that he was “atone” for the bit by “sacrific[ing] the most important thing in my life: my beautiful. award-winning. world-famous hair.”.

A barber then entered the set from behind, pulled out clippers, and draped Jost in a black cape.

Then the moment turned—right before the clippers made contact. Che interrupted with what the piece describes as a passionate “No!”

“You was really gonna do it?” he asked in seemingly genuine disbelief.

And then, dropping the bit for a second, Che told his friend directly how much he valued him: “Man, you are the greatest comedian of all time,” he said.

The piece frames that interruption as the clearest proof of the real relationship underneath the cruelty: the jokes are designed to make the other man squirm. but the exchange is also built to preserve something tender between co-anchors who know exactly how far they can push—without losing each other in the process.

Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Michael Che Colin Jost viral jokes Michael Jackson jokes Scarlett Johansson Kendrick Lamar Drake Ye Netflix roast of Kevin Hart