Colin Jost says his mother needed to take some time to get used to the name of his new baby boy with wife Scarlett Johansson.
The “Saturday Night Live” star and the “Black Widow” actor announced the arrival of son Cosmo in August. Jost's mom, Dr. Kerry Kelly, wasn’t quite onboard with the name.
“My family is very supportive, always,” Jost said Thursday on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” “My mom, I would say, was slightly thrown by it and didn’t quite understand it. I don’t know if she thought it was a hippie thing.”
Jost married Johansson in October 2020. Cosmo is his first child, while Johansson is already mom to daughter Rose, 6, who she shares with French journalist Romain Dauriac.
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Jost said his mother was kind of beating around the bush when it came to suggesting that maybe they choose a different name for Cosmo.
“She would call us and say, you know, after like three or four days, she’d be like, ‘Cosmo!’ She’d be like, ‘And, now, is it final? Like, did you submit the birth certificate?'” he said.
“And we’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, we did that at the hospital’ and she’s like, ‘OK, interesting. Because I was reading that there’s also a name Cosimo, with an “i,” so that could also be an option.'”
She appears to have come around on the name, though.
“She lives on Staten Island. Eventually, she started meeting various members of the Italian community who have a lot of Cosmo relatives and so then she would call and she would say, ‘I met someone. They said their uncle’s name is Cosmo. So, it is OK.’”
“Then she goes, ‘There’s also a patron saint called Cosmos, so that’s another option.'”