Saturday Night Live’s Season 51 cast will include some fresh faces but, luckily, Weekend Update is staying the same. Despite rumors that longtime anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che would be among those leaving SNL amid changes to Update, they are both sticking around for at least one more year, meaning another season of roasts, jokes and the fan-favorite Joke Swap. The show's team seems to likes working with the pair, yet one writer admitted the hardest part of working with them, which is honestly hilarious.
Jost and Che have been the Weekend Update co-anchors since Season 40 and are the longest-tenured stars in their positions. Past cast members like Norm Macdonald, Tina Fey and Seth Meyers were praised for anchoring the satirical news segment, Jost and Che have certainly put their own flavor on it, and it helps that they work so well together. Which is why after being asked whether Che or Jost is more challenging to work with, staff writer KC Shornima shared on Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast that her job is both chill and kind of stressful, in a funny way:
I think they both bring their own challenges. No, they're both pretty chill. In terms of what SNL is, I think I have the chillest job. It's just these two guys, who are both comics, who are easy to deal with. The only things that I feel like are kind of difficult sometimes is like, you're kind of like, where are they? Because they're running around so much. They're working on like all these other things and you're like, update. But then other than that, they're very...
I'm chuckling just imagining Jost and Che just running around 30 Rock, trying to complete tasks, while Shornima and other writers are trying to get a hold of them. Of course, staff writers have deadlines, and it's easy to think that it might be difficult to hit such cutoff points when you can't get a hold of two of SNL's top stars. However, Shornima doesn’t seem to mind too much and just expects it from the Weekend Update stars at this point, which honestly makes this even more hilarious.
That being said, aside from trying to find Jost and Che, KC Shornima says she has “such a chill job,” explaining that she submits jokes anonymously, and the quips told on Update are just from a compiled sheet. Shornima shared that their week mostly consists of writing and submitting 20 to 30 jokes and then going over and picking the final jokes with Jost and Che that Friday which she says is “stressful."
From there, the group compiles them on Saturday before the show and writes more if need be. Even with the stress, Shornima couldn’t say enough good things about writing for Weekend Update, which she dubbed the best part of SNL:
I love my job. I think, I think like Update, low key, like the best way to be in SNL. It's such a, like, and everyone is so nice. It's like our team is so great. It's like Pete, Meg, and Josh. And it used to be like Rosebud last year. It was, it was just like, it's such a fun environment.
With Colin Jost and Michael Che returning as Weekend Update anchors, I'm curious about what out-of-pocket jokes might be told this season and how much (unintended) stress they’ll put on the writing team. Series alums have surely talked about how frantic the show can be, but I love hearing KC Shornima's lighthearted and funny take on the chaos.
Saturday Night Live will soon be back, so fans won’t have to wait too long for more Weekend Update. Season 51 premieres on October 4 at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC amid the 2025 TV schedule, and streaming the next day with a Peacock subscription.
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