Here's What's Happening With Colin Jost's Staten Island Ferry Boat
Staten Island native Colin Jost surprised millions—including his wife Scarlett Johansson—when he and Saturday Night Live co-star Pete Davison bought a Staten Island Ferry boat two years ago for $280,000. Both Jost and Johansson have expressed their honest thoughts about the purchase, and in a new interview, Johansson gave an update on the massive orange ship.
The Fly Me to the Moon star appeared on Live With Kelly and Mark on Nov. 26 and opened up about her marriage with the Weekend Update co-anchor.
"He is a very, very, very great guy. I’m extremely lucky. He’s a kind person and he’s hilarious and thoughtful and loving and he’s a great dad and I love him. I feel very, very lucky," she gushed. "But he’s also... got his naughty side. He keeps it interesting."
Show host Mark Consuelos asked her about "that boat," to which Johansson quipped, "That’s the naughty part I was talking about." "He bought the Staten Island Ferry—a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry. And it is, yep, still decommissioned," she shared.
In September, Jost turned the boat into a glitzy New York Fashion Week venue for the Tommy Hilfiger runway show aboard the ship. The one-of-a-kind show was a welcome sight for Johansson, who wondered how they were going to afford keeping the boat. "I was like, 'OK, what’s happening with this boat? It’s got to start paying for its own docking fees at least!' So this year they had the Tommy Hilfiger fashion show on the Staten Island Ferry!'"
Johansson at first wasn't thrilled about the idea.
"I was like, ‘Fashion people are coming on the Staten Island Ferry? What’s happening with the bathrooms? Surely you renovated the bathrooms?'" she continued. "And he was like, 'No, I don’t actually know…'"
"You can basically see everybody from [above the chest and below the knees] in the toilets," she explained. "It’s like being in elementary school. So I was like, ‘I can’t wait to hear how [that goes].'"
Speaking to People at the show in September, Jost shared the blunt hindsight knowledge he's gained in the past two years of ferry ownership.
"It is absolutely the dumbest and least thought-through purchase I've ever made in my life," Jost said. "The way I justified it is for the amount of money we were putting into buying it, on just a basic square-footage level, is if you found the right place for it to be, you were essentially buying a building on its side that's 65,000 square feet. So around New York, that is a very good price per square foot."
While Johansson teased the ferry would be a great venue for bat mitzvahs and other events, it isn't open for bookings—yet.