Colin Jost To Star As Dentist/Drug Kingpin In Drama Series At Peacock

EXCLUSIVE: Colin Jost is branching out to scripted series. The Saturday Night Live veteran has teamed up with writer-producer Alex Barnow (The Goldbergs, Power: Origins) for a drama, which has landed at Peacock for development.

Jost is executive producing and attached to star in the untitled series, from Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, where Jost and his No Notes Productions have an overall deal.

The project will not affect Jost’s tenure on SNL where he has been for more than two decades in various roles, including co-head writer and most recently Weekend Update co-anchor alongside Michael Che since March 2014.

Should the Peacock series get picked up and Jost choose to continue on SNL, he could do both, something other SNL cast members have done in the past, including Kenan Thompson, who juggled the sketch program and his eponymous NBC sitcom, Aidy Bryant, who did SNL and Hulu’s Shrill, and Cecily Strong (SNL and Schmigadoon!).

The untitled Larry Levin/Colin Jost project will be written by Barnow based on Season 1 of the Audacy podcast Wolves Among Us. By day, Larry Lavin (Jost) was a respected Ivy League dentist and family man – by night, the East Coast’s most elusive cocaine kingpin. This series is inspired by the shocking and absurd true story of the suburban dentist who built a drug empire behind the façade of the American dream.

Barnow, who serves as showrunner, executive produces with Jost and Jeff Grosvenor of No Notes Productions and Rachel Kaplan (La Brea) of Absecon Entertainment. Lavin, Matt Davis and Steve Seidel serve as co-executive producers.

While the series is designated as drama, it is expected to have comedic elements as both Jost and Barnow come from comedy background.

This would mark Jost’s TV acting debut; he has appeared in such comedy features as Staten Island Summer, which he also wrote, How To Be Single, Tom & Jerry, Coming 2 America and the upcoming The Breadwinner, as well as the comedy-drama Fly Me To the Moon alongside his actress wife Scarlett Johansson.

Jost, who also hosts Pop Culture Jeopardy!, set to move to Netflix from Prime Video, is repped by CAA and Yorn Levine Barnes.

Barnow, who most recently served as a consulting producer on the upcoming Starz drama series Origins, the latest offshoot in the Power universe, was previously executive producer and showrunner on ABC’s longrunning comedy series The Goldbergs. He created and executive produced another ABC comedy, Mr. Sunshine, starring Matthew Perry, and also worked on a slew of broadcast sitcoms. Barnow, who co-wrote the 2019 feature Shaft and got his start in television on Family Guy, is repped by UTA, Amplified Entertainment, and HJTH.