Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson hasn’t responded to Stephen Dorff’s sympathy over her place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but her sympathies are otherwise occupied when her husband is performing on Saturday Night Live.
Appearing remotely on the Kelly Clarkson show on Wednesday, Johansson talked about a number of things including her new Marvel movie, acting on Broadway, and her family. That included Jost, her husband and co-head writer on Saturday Night Live. According to the actress, it’s hard to watch the show while knowing that someone you love is involved in the high-wire act of putting on a live TV show about once a week.
“I now rarely watch the show without having just a sense of… not overwhelming panic, just like, a slight underwhelming panic,” Johansson said. “Because I just feel like at any moment something’s going to fall apart. And that’s the excitement of SNL, that it’s absolutely live.”
It’s not that she’s expecting disaster, of course, but that the “excitement” of live TV for audiences changes when you know someone putting in that work on screen.
“When you’re emotionally invested in it and not just entertained by it, it takes on a little bit of a different life,” she said.
That certainly makes sense, as scripted TV and movies have a much bigger safety net for when things go wrong. You always want to see the people you know performing at their best, and even though Jost ordinarily only appears on camera for Weekend Update he has a large role on the show behind the scenes. The rest of the interview has some fun Marvel tidbits, but ahead of an uncertain summer for Saturday Night Live, it sure sounds like Johansson wouldn’t mind more Tom and Jerry films in Jost’s future rather than more anxiety-filled live TV.
