Spoiler alert! We're discussing minor details about a scene from "Fly Me to the Moon" (in theaters now).
“Fly Me to the Moon” has one of the more star-studded ensembles in recent memory, with Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano and “Community” favorite Jim Rash.
But the most inspired casting is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from none other than Colin Jost, who co-hosts “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live” and is also Johansson’s husband. The comedian appears midway through the film as the dimwitted Senator Cook.
The romantic comedy follows an advertising maven named Kelly Jones (Johansson), who’s sent to NASA in 1969 to help market the moon landing. Much to the annoyance of launch director Cole Davis (Tatum), she turns the Apollo 11 astronauts into chipper spokesmen for the mission: smiling through gritted teeth in countless TV interviews and product placement ads. She also becomes an unofficial political lobbyist, glad-handing with conservative U.S. senators whose votes are needed to fund space flight.
One of those politicians is Cook, who meets Kelly and Cole in a dimly lit boardroom, where he's gobsmacked by drawings of laser-wielding extraterrestrials. Assuming they're real aliens, he blindly pledges his support.
Johansson, 39, thought Jost was a natural fit for the role of a daffy senator.
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“I was like, ‘He’s a hardcore, hate-fueled, right-leaning conspiracy theorist …,’ ” she jokes. The scene itself is "very strange. I was like, what is this movie?"
“I’m not joking when I say it’s one of my favorite scenes," Tatum adds. "It’s the most pushed in terms of the tone of the movie and the zany out-thereness.”
In all seriousness, Johansson says that director Greg Berlanti was the one who wanted the cameo.
“They’re having a bromance,” Johansson explains. “Greg asked if I thought he would be interested in doing it. And I’m like, ‘You have to call his agent. That is how the channels work.’ ”
As Berlanti tells it, Jost’s cameo “was such a treat. I got to know him socially through Scarlett, and I was the one begging, 'Will he just come in?’ Colin had everybody in stitches; there are a lot of outtakes. There’s a very funny one where he looks at Scarlett and Channing and says, ‘Is something going on between you guys?’ All this off-the-cuff stuff that was really funny.”
Through Johansson’s character, the film looks at how capitalism and democracy are interwoven: The senators “show a little snippet of American politics at that time, and how it factored into this larger mission in a really interesting way,” screenwriter Rose Gilroy says. “In a movie that’s a little bit meta in and of itself, it just plays so well to have him there working with Scarlett. He elevated that comedically into a whole other stratosphere.”
It's the first time that Johansson has acted with Jost, 42, despite her many stints hosting “SNL.” They started dating in 2017 and married in 2020, and now share a soon-to-be 3-year-old son, Cosmo.
“I don’t get to work with him as an actor really ever,” Johansson says. “We’ve never worked in that capacity together. He’s written stuff for me when I’m on ‘SNL,’ but it was great. Very efficient!”
