The Paris 2024 Olympics may officially be over, but they did manage to leave behind one cliffhanger: What’s the latest tragedy that Colin Jost and/or his foot have suffered? After suddenly disappearing from his post as an NBC surfing correspondent in Tahiti, the Saturday Night Live star popped up on Instagram on Sunday night to make sure he didn’t leave his fans hanging.
After joking that the only text messages he has received in the last several days have all been the same question—”Dude, are you OK?”—the “Weekend Update” co-anchor assured concerned citizens that he’s “actually fine. And despite what big media conspiracy theories would have you believe, I wasn’t sent home from the Olympics.”
Jost shared that NBC had examined his injured foot and instead legally declared him a “leper,” then exiled him to the isle of Malta. Why Malta? “Because it was the site of 10 separate bubonic plague outbreaks, so they thought I would fit right in.”
But just because he was banished from Paris doesn’t mean that Jost didn’t find an ingenious way to continue witnessing all the exciting surfing action he was dispatched to Tahiti to talk about in the first place.
“I swam to a nearby yacht, and convinced them to let me use their VPN in exchange for, ironically, feet pics. That way I was able to log into Peacock from international waters,” Jost explained. “After enduring ad after ad for a new psoriasis drug that I think is called Shaboozey, I was finally able to see American phenom Caroline Marks and local Tahitian legend Kauli Vaast take home the Olympic gold on what I predict will be the best waves we will ever see at an Olympics. And I would like to sincerely thank the people of Tahiti for their warmth, their generosity, their hospitality, and for only occasionally looking at my foot and whispering, ‘chupacabra.’”
Jost ended the video by assuring viewers that he is indeed alive. And, in the end—against all odds and despite a stomach-turning injury that had the ants of Tahiti attempting to make a meal out of his staph-infected foot—Jost accomplished what he came to the Olympics to do: report on surfing. Even if he had to do it in isolation from the Mediterranean Sea.
Jost’s seemingly never-ending series of gruesome maladies may not have made for a great night’s sleep for the SNL star, but they did make for one hell of a laugh during this year’s Summer Games—particularly his late-night segments with Maria Taylor.
