Cory Michael Smith Defies Genres: Actor Talks New Film, ‘Saturday Night’

When I talk to Cory Michael Smith, it’s not Saturday night — and we’re not in New York, either. Instead, it’s a clear-skied Wednesday afternoon in Toronto and we speak from the comfort of a Four Seasons’ suite, sunlight streaming in through picture windows. Yet there’s a special sort of pre-show buzz here, too. Excitement and anticipation hang in the air as flurries of journalists rush through the halls, queuing up to interview the cast of Saturday Night — a biographical comedy-drama directed by Jason Reitman. In a frenzied 109 minutes, the film captures creativity and chaos in the buildup to the Saturday Night Live premiere. We might be a plane ride away from 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but Cory Michael Smith brings an electric enthusiasm that rivals your favourite cold open.

“It’s a real rallying cry for young people to feel strong in their beliefs,” Smith says of Saturday Night. broadcast. “I think Saturday Night Live was this miracle that young people stole the baton of prime time television, and — for the first time — introduced underground, young comics and musicians to a full American audience and said, ‘You have to listen to us.'”

Saturday Night follows suit, crowded with young talent — Gabriel LaBelle, Dylan O’Brien, Kaia Gerber, Rachel Sennott, Lamorne Morris, Nicholas Braun, and Finn Wolfhard, to name a few — alongside veterans like Willem Dafoe and JK Simmons. Cory Michael Smith stars as comedian Chevy Chase, who founded SNL’s much-loved ‘Weekend Update.’

“It’s about a younger generation really putting up a middle finger to establishment, or putting a finger up to tradition, and saying: ‘There’s a better way of doing things.'”

Cory Michael Smith on Saturday Night Live

Remaining faithful to SNL’s disruptive roots, Saturday Night hits the ground running, busy and boisterous as rush hour in Midtown. “Its pace felt a little more independent than you would probably expect from a big studio film, but I think that helped,” explains Smith. Thanks to Reitman’s diligent planning — he spent months blocking each scene with stand-ins — the film appears frantic by design. “There was an objective of catching chaos,” Smith explains. “You don’t want that much downtime.”

Accordingly, the film moves at breakneck pace. Clocks, digital and physical, become more and more present as the deadline looms, building a palpable urgency. A crowded bulletin board hangs at the centre of the stress, surrounded by a gaggle of eager stagehands. It’s a recreation of the very first SNL schedule, with a colourful collection of sticky notes to denote musical numbers and stand-up features. An increasingly manic Lorne Michaels juggles a mob of aspiring comedians as they clamour for airtime; meanwhile, doubtful executives circle the chaos like vultures, searching for any reason to pull the plug. An abundance of behind-the-scenes brawls and last-minute setbacks whip up a storm of suspense that rages until the credits roll. Even if we know the ending, it’s a genuine nail-biter.

On the Saturday Night set, however, things weren’t quite as volatile. Smith credits Jason Reitman for the smooth filming process. “Jason was really smart in having everything planned out,” Smith recalls. “Once we were moving through the day, there wasn’t a lot of downtime.”

In lieu of hostile NBC execs and eleventh-hour adjustments, Smith’s role brought a different set of challenges. Saturday Night is the actor’s first foray into comedy, for one. Smith calls it a “unique comedy experience,” as he’s working from life. “Part of the fear and panic that set in was like, ‘Holy shit. I don’t know how to read. I don’t know how to do this as Chevy Chase.’ Like, I can’t read the script and have an instinct as to what he would do,” Smith explains.

Perhaps that initial anxiety helped Smith channel his character. Chevy Chase, originally committed as a writer, also found himself charting new waters when he joined the SNL cast just before the premiere. In any case, Smith wears the role well. He embodies Chase’s carefully crafted confidence on screen, delivering his lines with the comedian’s trademark arrogance. Yet, a few sobering moments backstage suggest there’s something else — self-doubt, nerves — lurking behind his bravado.

“The second time you meet Chevy, he’s in the room with the affiliates. By the end of that scene, Willem Dafoe — who’s playing Dave Tebbit, an NBC executive — pulls him aside and says, ‘You’re the next Johnny Carson,'” Smith explains. “That makes his ego fly high, which is shattered on the ground later by J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle.”

Smith is a diligent student. He researched Chase’s old interviews and SNL sketches, noting his body language and turns of phrase. “I had to do what I would normally do for a drama,” explains the actor. It’s not just about mimicking his mannerisms, Smith explains. He tried to understand why Chase speaks and acts in a certain way; where he holds tension in his body, how he interacts with the world.

“Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of this for 50 years — like, who is the CEO of any company for 50 years? It’s actually insane.”

Cory Michael Smith

“I spent hundreds of hours either actually watching [Chevy Chase] or having him in the background,” Smith says, practicing “until I felt like I could read the script and truly, instinctually, know: ‘He would say it this way; he would sort of off-glide this, or he would blink emphatically after this, because he isn’t certain that that was a funny joke.’ He would do that to make it seem funnier, to queue people to laugh.”

It wasn’t all business on set, though. Smith likens the work environment to a playground: it’s fun by design, conducive to kinship and chemistry. The work itself — cracking jokes, building rapport — was essential to capture the ragtag magic of a young SNL ensemble. “It’s [about] figuring out how all of these moments tie together, to swing and hit the ball as hard as possible for each moment. I think this cast does an amazing job of that,” he adds. “I don’t think I’ve ever been part of an ensemble as strong as this movie. It’s actually— it’s unbelievable.”

As Smith describes the atmosphere on set, it’s easy to see the parallels between Saturday Night and the sketch-comedy broadcast. In both, cheerful camaraderie abounds; the casts are riddled with enthusiasm, eager to experiment. Smith has a clear reverence for his subject, too. Before he knew he wanted to act, Smith says he imitated Chevy Chase and his contemporaries — Bill Murray, Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy. “I would love to meet Chevy,” he says, “just simply to tell him that it’s an honour to portray him.”

“There’s always a generational tug of war. There’s an established way of doing things, and there are disruptors.”

Cory Michael Smith

The sentiment is more than flattery. While he’s been watching SNL since middle school, Smith says filming Saturday Night only deepened his love for the show. “Having historical context on the importance of this, how unlikely it was, makes me appreciate the institution,” says the actor. “I think there’s something really very impressive, reflecting on the fact that Lorne Michaels has been at the helm of this for 50 years — like, who is the CEO of any company for 50 years? It’s actually insane. And the way he’s done that is [by], somehow, finding and empowering the new brand of comedy.”

For Smith, SNL is more than television; he’s taken with the mythology behind the show. It’s a David and Goliath narrative: a young, fiery bunch of comics challenge the bigwigs of entertainment to establish sketch comedy for a new generation. Yet even after they succeed, the SNL cast continues to innovate — that’s what piqued Smith’s interest. “Saturday Night Live has been the arbiter of new comedy. It has taught generations what is funny, and especially as things change socially and politically, Saturday Night Live has sort of taught people — or allowed people or challenged people — to accept new kinds of comedy, new topics, which I think has been a real service to our culture,” explains the actor.

Summed up in a sentence, Saturday Night is a tribute to the trailblazers of entertainment. “It’s about a younger generation really putting up a middle finger to establishment, or putting a finger up to tradition, and saying, ‘There’s a better way of doing things — or a different way of doing things — and we’re actually gonna do it,” Smith elaborates.

“My bigger goal — as an actor, at least — is to really show people that I can defy genre.”

Cory Michael Smith

The film carries a certain flavour of disruption that resonates outside the cinema. It’s an evergreen tale: newcomers feel constrained by the old guard, clashing with stubborn defenders of the status quo. “I think we see it more vividly today in our culture because social media exists,” Smith agrees. “Young people can corral and rally in a way that they haven’t in the past.” In fact, today’s media landscape is almost unrecognizable, dominated by on-demand service. Smith points to the rise of Netflix and the subsequent explosion in streaming service bundles — which feels a bit like cable’s answer to the streaming era.

“There’s always a generational tug of war. There’s an established way of doing things, and there are disruptors,” says Smith. “Things are constantly changing and evolving.” Perhaps this offers an explanation for SNL‘s longevity. The show has embraced change from the start, spotlighting up-and-coming talent as hosts or musical guests, tailoring skits to capture the zeitgeist. No two shows are exactly the same. Even the credits betray a sense of creative restlessness, with regular hires and departures (Chase himself left during the second season).

Versatility has become a virtue of Smith’s, too. His filmography reveals an intrinsic adaptability, proving that he, like Lorne Michaels and Chevy Chase, understands the dynamic nature of entertainment. Smith isn’t afraid to experiment.

“This year, there are a lot of new things in my life. My bigger goal — as an actor, at least — is to really show people that I can defy genre,” he says. “I just shot a pilot in July for Amazon with Tatiana Maslany; it’s the first time that I play someone who is hyper-sexualized. It’s a show about sex and marriage and questioning monogamy and it’s really looking into the mystery of desire: why we want something that we don’t have or don’t understand and, as soon as we have it or we understand it, we don’t want it anymore.” The pilot, titled Nightbeast, is billed as a horror comedy. The actor says it’s new territory, adding: “It’s a lot of skin and a lot of sex.”

Elsewhere, Smith is set to film Joachim Trier’s upcoming feature, Sentimental Value. This time, humour mixes with drama. Calling him “an exceptional European director,” Smith says Trier evokes the sort of genre-defying performance that he wants to explore. “[The performances are] hyper-natural and certainly have a playfulness and a little comedy, but they’re dramas,” he says. “I would like to be able to do all of these things. I feel like there’s still characters and spaces that I haven’t really toyed around with.”

And, while he’s quick to praise his team — “I’ve been very lucky; I’ve had these managers I’ve worked with for 12 years, and I’ve relied on them for their wisdom, their guidance, their advice” — Smith’s career choices come down to passion. To see what he means, look no further than Yen Tan’s 1985. The drama follows Adrian Lester (Smith), a young man grappling with an AIDS diagnosis, as he visits his conservative family and struggles to break the news.

“It’s in black and white shot on 16 millimetre film, like, very much an art film. But, I loved Yen Tan’s work and I really fell in love with this character; I felt very strong emotional attachment to this character,” he explains. “I remember saying to them, ‘I don’t know if this movie will be good. I can’t predict that. But what I feel certain about — reading this script and knowing the emotional attachment I have to this character immediately — this movie could be garbage, but I promise you my performance will be great.'”

Of course, Smith was confident in 1985 from start. “I didn’t think it would be garbage because Yen Tan is a stunning filmmaker,” he clarifies. “But it’s the moments like that, where I go as a young voice, the artist, saying to my established team, ‘Actually we’re taking [the role] — we’re doing this for artistic reasons.'” 

This type of passion translates onto the big screen; it’s the same unfettered enthusiasm that propelled Lorne Michaels to advocate for SNL all those years ago. So the story of Saturday Night, then, is about more than young comedians or television legacies; it’s about following an impulse — to play, to create, to experiment — and discovering what comes next.

Saturday Night is now playing in theatres.

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