Becoming ‘SNL’: How the ‘Saturday Night’ Cast Captured the Magic of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players

In Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night,” we meet the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players mere minutes before they revolutionize comedy — and television itself — with their live, late-night NBC variety show dreamed up by an inscrutable Canadian named Lorne Michaels. Buzzing with nervous energy, the film tick-tocks through the chaotic final 90 minutes before the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” (which at that point didn’t have the “Live” in its title) hits the air on October 11, 1975.

We see John Belushi (Matt Wood) and Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) narrowly miss getting crushed by a falling studio light; Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) flirt shamelessly with Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn); Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) and Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) bond over feeling sidelined; and Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) announce himself by falling over a trash can and boasting about his manhood. Adding to the mayhem are a beleaguered Jim Henson and an impish Andy Kaufman in full Foreign Man persona (Nicholas Braun plays both). And at the center of it all is Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), maneuvering through the maelstrom of egos.

After reuniting for TheWrap cover shoot on a crisp fall day in Manhattan, LaBelle, Braun, Hunt, Matula, O’Brien, Smith, Wood and Morris — fresh off his Emmy win for “Fargo” — sat for a lively chat.

You play one of the most famous TV ensembles in history. How did you come together and bond as an ensemble yourselves?

LAMORNE MORRIS Should we say cast camp? [Group nods] You know, we don’t talk about cast camp because it’s a thing between us.

Oh, is it like Fight Club?

MORRIS  [Laughs] Jason, in an effort to get everybody to feel more familial, it had to be a setting where we got rid of trailers. There were no separate spaces, really. We had our own little rooms, but they were all in this massive [open space] and we just hung out and played ping-pong and board games and watched TV, things like that. All ’70s-based, by the way.

KIM MATULA And it was beautiful. Each room had its own theme. “SNL” was playing nonstop on the TV. Season 1.

ELLA HUNT Yeah, it felt like “Groundhog Day” every time you turned up there.

GABRIEL LABELLE Ultimately, we’re all in the same position of playing real people and we’re all working on the voice and the walk and we’re all together in that, sharing each other’s nerves and comparing notes. We’re all studying the same period of time so naturally, we just bonded in that.

Gabe, you mentioned how you all played real people. And these particular people are extremely famous. You can’t capture the totality of a person in a movie, especially in an ensemble of this size, so for each of you, what was the most important aspect of your character that you wanted to convey?

MORRIS I would say for Garrett, he told me he just wanted the audience to know that he didn’t quit. He really worked his ass off to become what [the other cast members] were already. He wasn’t a sketch writer. He was a playwright, and this was a medium of entertainment that he wasn’t familiar with. And so it took some time, but he figured it out. And there wasn’t a lot for me to do because Jason [and Gil Kenan] wrote it. It was there, the arc was already written.

HUNT I think you’re underselling yourself there.

MORRIS No, no, I won an Emmy. I’m good. I know I’m great. [Laughs]

HUNT Your custodianship of Garrett, to me, was one of the most beautiful things to witness on this shoot. We have a scene together in the film that happens three quarters of the way through, where Gilda checks in with Garrett, and then he proceeds to share with her all of his many talents. And watching Lamorne, take after take, imbue Garrett further and further into the performance was giddying and really moving. 

Who wants to follow that?

MATULA God, that’s a good answer.

MATT WOOD [Sits up dramatically; speaks in a gravely, Belushi-ish voice] I guess I’ll talk. [Laughter]

DYLAN O’BRIEN This is how Matt really sounds, by the way.

MORRIS Go from here. [Pats Wood’s chest] From the heart.

WOOD From the heart? OK. [Puts hand on heart] John. Because we’re doing this 90 minutes before the first show, we don’t have the pressure of needing to capture the full span of these people. And in regards to John, one of the most cool, beautiful, heartbreaking decisions in the movie is to put him at a little bit of a low. Big mood swings are very famous with him. This big, enigmatic figure that we all know as so boisterous and engaging — and he’s starting off in a pretty low place.

A famous quote of John’s is, “My television is covered in spit,” just to explain to Lorne where he’s coming from. He doesn’t like the medium and he doesn’t trust these people. In this movie, we’re getting this cool opportunity to show that anarchic spirit, that brick wall that is Belushi. And something that Jason would always say to me on set if I was getting lost in the sauce is, “Hey, [Belushi] doesn’t give a f—.” And it’s like, right? He doesn’t give a f—, you know? That was a good north star to hang on to.

LABELLE You had a great one, Kim, when you were talking to Jane.

MATULA Oh, yeah. I was able to talk to Jane on the phone. The opportunity just presented itself to me, and I wasn’t going to turn it down. That would be nutter butter. [Laughter]

CORY MICHAEL SMITH She just was Jane Curtin.

MATULA I wanted to know how she felt being on that set, what her relationship was like with the rest of the cast. It was a boys’ club. There were men in the cast who were actively like, “Women are not funny.” If you wanted to really be seen, then you had to write it yourself. And she was not a writer, so she got thrown into this being like, Oh, they want me, so they’ll use me. But that ended up not being the case for her, and she felt like she really had to prove herself. But despite all of those things that were such a challenge, she also said that it was some of the most fun she’s ever, ever had. She said when she walked out onto the stage on show night, she could feel the buzz start from her feet and just radiate up through her body.

Jane came from a background of commercials. She was the commercial queen. After a table read, Jason came up to me, and he was like, “Jane needs another moment.” And then two days before we shot the scene with me and Lamorne, he was like, “OK, I wrote this monologue for you. It’s this weird blend of commercials that she’s done, and you get to show the highs and lows.” It was one of my favorite scenes to shoot. I loved it.

MORRIS First of all, I was impressed by her performance, but more so impressed by how fast because I’m memorizing the same scene. I’m working on the exact same scene, and then I get these new pages and I’m like, Oh, there’s no way she’s gonna pull this off. There’s no way. She’s gonna ruin the whole movie! [Laughs] There are moments where I’m just watching her and it’s my line and I’m like, Oh, s—. I gotta talk.

HUNT For me, with Gilda, it was her empathy. We know her as this comedic gold — the vastness of her characters and her ability to shape-shift into little old ladies or children or whatever. But she had this magic ability to clock anyone in need in the room and check in with them and use every element of her being — whether it was flirtatiousness or kindness or a childlike naivety — to put them at ease. And that was just a beautiful thing to spend time sitting into.

NICHOLAS BRAUN I’ll talk about Andy and Jim.

You had an extra challenge, playing two people. And Andy Kaufman has a quality of being unknowable. 

BRAUN Yeah, he was more intimidating to play than Jim. They both have this lore around them, and they’re beloved. Andy was 25 at the time and Jim was 39, so I wanted to tap into [how] they’re going through super different things. Andy’s doing his first TV appearance of his career tonight. Jim already had “The Muppet Show” greenlit, and [“SNL”] was experimental. He was trying to show other levels of himself. So they’re both trying to prove things in completely different ways. With Andy, I wanted to have a certain wonder about him. I thought I’d do Andy’s normal voice, so I sent Jason a clip. It was Andy’s audition for the show. I was like, “I’m gonna work on this.” He was like, “I think you should do the Foreign Man voice.”   

[With Henson], I wanted to nail his voice, I wanted to nail his passion. I wanted to nail his feeling like an outcast, like he wasn’t a part of this thing. Jim is getting rejected by everyone there, so this is a tough night for him. He couldn’t write his own stuff. He was writing and creating the rest of his Muppet career, but the union thing was that the [“SNL”] writers upstairs had to write stuff, so his hands were tied.

O’BRIEN With Dan [Aykroyd], what really struck me about him — especially him younger, which I was a lot less familiar with — was just how absurdly intelligent he was and precise in his improvisation and his cadence. And he possesses seemingly no insecurities. But he doesn’t dominate a space. He’s so not competitive in any way. He just has this really quiet confidence of knowing how fast he is. His screen test, I was so fascinated by it. That became fun homework for me. I always just used that as a little compass to try to train myself. And he really loved women. That’s in the movie.

SMITH The Chevy that most people know and see in his films is: He has this outrageous confidence. He’s just so smooth, he’s so fast and he’s able to be goofy and still sexy because of this confidence. What I find so interesting in Jason’s script is that he gives [Chase] the same attributes of confidence from the very beginning. He walks into this film talking about his own…[pauses] appendage — you know, bragging about its size. He’s cocky, literally. 

But the thing is, he gained that confidence from his first season of “Saturday Night Live” and everything that came after it. The show was October 11, 1975. By December, he was on the cover of New York magazine. And so Jason wrote this arc about a young man who is born to be confident, born to have this amazing career, but there’s nothing underneath it. And someone like Milton Berle [played by J.K. Simmons], who is accomplished, who is the biggest name in television, can come around and say to him, “Kid, you’re a nobody.” And he can be swatted down and shattered in an instant. Chevy in 1985, that wouldn’t happen to him, but it does here.

LABELLE One of the first things Jason told me about why he’s making this film is he wanted to show a group of young people who [are saying], “Just give me a chance to make something.” So what is that yearning for Lorne? He was dreaming about comedy since he was 14 years old. I didn’t talk to Lorne, but I wanted to imagine, OK, what’s that dreamer? What’s this person who just loves this so much? Why does he care about this project? And I think that was part of the relationships he formed with all of these people, his friends he invited to come on the show. I wanted to show how much he loves this brainchild of his and what’s at stake if it doesn’t happen and the responsibility he feels if he fails the people he loves. 

For each of you, what is your favorite “SNL” sketch of all time?

MORRIS “More Cowbell.” There’s a bunch. That’s just one that I just threw out there.

BRAUN Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri cheerleaders. Anytime they did the cheerleaders.

LABELLE I rehearsed that and performed that at recess in, like, Grade 5 all the time. I grew up on the best of Will Ferrell, Chris Farley.

MATULA “Schweddy Balls.”

SMITH Of Chevy’s, my favorite is the sketch called “Word Association.”

With Richard Pryor?

SMITH With Richard Pryor. It’s so great.

I don’t think that would even air today.

SMITH I don’t know. I mean, it was wild and risqué in 1975.

MORRIS On “The Chappelle Show,” it could live.

WOOD My favorite John sketch is “Little Chocolate Donuts.” I think that’s really sweet. “For breakfast every day, I have little chocolate donuts.”

HUNT Favorite Gilda? Judy Miller. Her hopping around as a little girl. The moment she comes out of the closet as the French [queen] and bangs down on the bed is so glorious.

O’BRIEN My favorite Aykroyd, I love Fred Garvin. We tried to squeeze it in the movie, [when I say], “I’m a strumpet.” He’s a male prostitute, but he’s a nerdy guy with, like, a sinus infection. He’s all blocked up. It’s really funny. 

HUNT So there you have it, folks. 

This story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap awards magazine.

Read more from the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue here.

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