Colin Jost is very much alive, though he may not be entirely in one piece.
Jost, 42, shared a “foot update” via Instagram on Sunday, August 11, after exiting his role as NBC’s Olympics surfing correspondent in Tahiti early. (Jost was replaced during coverage of the semifinals and finals by Australian weatherman Luke Bradnam.)
“‘Dude, are you OK?’ That’s the number one text message I’ve received in the last 48 hours. Usually followed by, ‘Heard your foot fell off,’” the Saturday Night Live star said in a video filmed in Malta, where he is recuperating from various ailments, including a foot injury and an ear infection, which hampered his stint in Tahiti.
“Well, I’m actually fine, and despite what big media conspiracies would have you believe, I wasn’t ‘sent home’ from the Olympics. NBC simply looked at my foot, declared me legally a leper, and exiled me here to the island of Malta,” Jost continued.
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“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,” the comedian quipped while standing in front of the sea. “It also has this casino behind me where I’ve blown the hundreds of dollars I earned as a surfing correspondent.”
Jost continued, “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.”
The comedian said he still managed to catch the finals of the surfing competitions and congratulated “American phenom Caroline Marks and local Tahitian legend Kauli Vaast” on winning gold.
“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,’” he went on.
“But rest assured, my foot is pretty much totally fine even though I’m not letting you look at it,” he added. “In case you’re concerned, I will show you the local newspaper with today’s headline so you know I’m still alive,” Jost concluded, showing a Photoshopped front page of a newspaper with the headline: “OJ Found Not Guilty.”
Shortly after arriving in Tahiti for his assignment, Jost suffered multiple cuts to his foot while standing barefoot on a coral reef. “This might ruin my WikiFeet score but I just arrived in Tahiti for the surfing Olympics and the reef was excited to greet me #paris2024 #showfeet,” Jost wrote alongside a photo of his injured foot shared via Instagram on July 26.
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Three days later, he shared a photo of his bandaged toes and captioned it, “You know it’s going great when you’ve been to the Olympic medical tent more than any of the athletes.”
On July 30, Jost told NBC’s Mike Tirico that he woke up with an ear infection in addition to a staph infection due to his foot injury. “My new goal by the time I leave here is to have as many infections as there are Olympic events,” he joked.
