Colin Jost shares ‘foot update’ after exiting Paris Olympics correspondent job for brutal injury
Putting his best foot forward.
Colin Jost shared a hilarious “foot update” on Instagram Sunday after he had to leave his job as an NBC correspondent covering the Olympics surfing competition in Tahiti due to a foot injury and multiple illnesses.
The 42-year-old comedian filmed a video where he spoke to the camera like a news reporter in front of the Mediterranean Sea in Malta.
“Dude, are you OK?’ That’s the no. 1 text message I’ve received in the past 48 hours. Usually followed by, ‘Heard your foot fell off,’ ” Jost began in his video.
“Well, I’m actually fine!” he added. “And despite what big media conspiracies would have you believe, I wasn’t ‘sent home’ from the Olympics. NBC simply looked at my food, declared me legally a leper, and exiled me here, to the island of Malta!”
Jost went on, “Now Malta doesn’t have many Olympians competing this year, but it does have thousands of 15-year-old British kids competing to see who can black out the fastest, and somehow they’re all winning. It also has this casino behind me, where I’ve blown the hundreds of dollars I’ve earned as a surfing correspondent.”
“But the real reason I’m in Malta of course is because it was the site of 10 separate bubonic plague outbreaks. So they thought I would fit right in.”
After cracking a few more jokes about the Olympics breakdancing competition, feet pictures and Peacock, the “Saturday Night Live” star thanked the people of Tahiti “for their warmth, their hospitality, their generosity and for only occasionally looking at my foot and and whispering ‘Chupacabra!’ “
“But rest assured,” he continued, “my foot is pretty much totally fine — Even though I’m not letting you look at it.
“Signing off from Tahiti in Malta for the Paris Olympics, I’m Colin Jost. I will see you at the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles where they have me reporting from Catalina Island,” Jost concluded.
Jost cut his foot on a coral reef while he was covering the Olympics in Tahiti.
He posted a picture of his bandaged and bloodied wounds via social media on July 29.
“You know it’s going great when you’ve been to the Olympic medical tent more than any of the athletes,” he wrote in his caption.
Jost’s health issues worsened when he developed a staph infection and an ear infection.
“I woke up this morning and discovered that I had added ear infection to my growing list of ailments,” he said in an interview from the pool in Tahiti on July 30.
“So I’m now on three different medications — four if you count piña coladas,” he hilariously added.
Jost later exited his role as NBC’s surfing competition correspondent because of his ailments.
He was replaced by Australian weather anchor Luke Bradnam, who was already in Tahiti covering the Olympics.
Bradnam admitted that he didn’t know who Jost was when they met in Tahiti before he took over his job.
“I said to one of the officials ‘Who’s that?,’ and she goes, ‘You know who he is,’ ” Bradnam recalled in an interview with Reuters on Aug. 4.
“And I go, ‘I don’t know.’ She goes, ‘He’s married to Scarlett Johansson. He’s from ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” Bradnam added.
