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“Saturday Night Live” has launched a new short-form series on Peacock and YouTube titled “The Rundown.”
In each episode, an “SNL” alum — Dana Carvey, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Bowen Yang and Questlove are early guests — will select a favorite segment from the show’s history and add it to Lorne Michaels’ famous “Rundown” board, building an all-star episode over time. In the first episode, Colin Jost breaks down the time-crunched complexities of writing a cold open, and he puts a favorite on the board — Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s “Katie Couric Interviews Sarah Palin.”
“It’s nostalgic for me because it was early on for me as a writer,” Jost said of the sketch. “It was just a great combination of Seth [Meyers] and Tina and Amy together. You got to see them playing off each other, and I think they’re two of the best to ever do it.”
He said the cold open “holds up in the whole history of the show as one of the best.”
Jost joined “SNL” as a writer in 2005 and estimated that he has probably written 100 cold opens. (Recently, he has starred in a lot of them too, as the beer-chugging Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.)
“I almost can’t believe that I’ve gotten to write so many of them,” Jost said. “Many I’ve blocked out, but some I am actually proud of — shockingly. I’m not going to rewatch them! That would ruin it.”
Jost also discussed the Brett Kavanaugh hearing sketch from 2018, which starred Matt Damon as the Supreme Court Justice. Jost said the cold open came together in less than 24 hours: they wrote it Friday night, convinced Damon to fly overnight from San Francisco to New York and broadcast it live on air on Saturday night.
Episodes of “The Rundown” will air on Wednesdays of “SNL” hiatus weeks through mid-June. Watch the first episode below.
English (US) ·