SNL50’s ‘COVID Curse’ Got Martin Short and Maya Rudolph

ABLUpdated 2 months Ago1 Mins read10

Sounds like sketches and performances weren’t the only things going viral at Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary special. “The SNL 50th Covid curse is real,” Steve Martin wrote in a Friday Instagram post that confirmed that Martin Short and Maya Rudolph both have COVID-19. Hmmm … is it a curse, or is it a reasonable outcome after the pair smooched at an event packed with unmasked celebs? Maybe Colin Jost’s Weekend Update joke during the special should actually have been taken as a warning. “Health experts are facing increased pressure this winter in the face of outbreaks of COVID, the flu, RSV, and nanovirus, which they’re calling a quad-demic,” Jost said in acknowledgement. “So we did the smart thing and packed every beloved entertainer over 60 into one tiny space.”

Do we know who got whom sick? According to CNN, Martin joked in his original caption, “Maya had Covid. Marty has Covid. I wonder why?” But perhaps he realized that sounds like Rudolph was patient zero at a superspreader event, because he later edited the caption to clarify that “she did NOT come to the show with it!”

In the meantime, two upcoming stops of Short and Martin’s Dukes of Funnytown Tour in Knoxville and Durham have been rescheduled for October. “So sorry for the inconvenience,” Martin wrote. “I think we’ll be funnier then, anyway.” Given how many people attended SNL’s birthday bash, it seems unlikely that only two of them got sick. Unofficial contract tracing would be a weird way to keep the Short ’n’ Streep dating rumors going, that’s for sure.