“Directing is 90% casting.” That maxim of unknown origin has been subscribed to by some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, including Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, John Ford, Elia Kazan, and, seemingly, Jason Reitman.
The filmmaker behind “Saturday Night,” the movie about making the first episode of “SNL,” has said he could only make the film if he got the casting right.
“He’s gonna find a John Belushi, and he’s gonna find a Gilda Radner, and he’s gonna find a Chevy Chase,” Reitman recently told The Hollywood Reporter of the task he put to his longtime casting director John Papsidera. “And, if he doesn’t, I guess we’re not going to make the movie.”
With “Saturday Night” officially out in theaters today, Oct. 11, check out how the movie’s cast compares to the real-life performers they portray.
Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels
“We only talked about a handful, maybe 10 or a dozen, Lornes,” Papsidera told THR of the hunt to cast the role of Lorne Michaels, the creator of “SNL.”
“Once you cross out all the ones that are not Jewish and Canadian, you really come down to one guy,” Reitman added, referring to Gabriel LaBelle, the actor who had a breakout performance in Steven Spielberg’s loosely autobiographical movie, “The Fabelmans.”
The only thing that worked against LaBelle when it came to casting was his age. Michaels was 30 when “SNL” debuted. LaBelle is 22. Thankfully, the up-and-coming actor has confidence beyond his years and proved to Reitman he could be believable as a 30-year-old.
“I met Gabe standing next to Steven Spielberg, and Gabe held his own standing next to the greatest director alive,” Reitman recalled. “That was one of the first moments where I went, ‘Wow, this kid has a presence.’”
“I met him once briefly,” LaBelle told Variety of Michaels. “I was reading books, a lot of books, the internet’s endless.” He admitted that he “looked at impressions” of Michaels, “not to do a caricature of him, but define what mannerisms kind of pop up that the people closest to him remember.” He added that he also focused on “just toning it down” and imitating Lornes’ Canadian accent.
Matt Wood as John Belushi
“Matt Wood is a guy who, probably since a teenager, has been going, ‘God, I really hope they make a John Belushi movie, because I’d be perfect,’” Reitman said. And he was right.
“When I was 14 years old that was the first time I got the Belushi comparison,” Wood said in a promotional interview for “Saturday Night.” “I was always hoping something would come along and then it happened to be the coolest project ever.”
Wood had a theater background, having been in the original Broadway cast of the “SpongeBob SquarePants” musical.
“I had to go back and rewatch ‘Animal House,’ ‘Blues Brothers,’ and all of his work,” Wood shared. “Watching his body language, watching how he moved, just kind of getting the physical character out and just kind of getting in the vibe of the time period.”
“John was round but athletic and shockingly spry, so part of the trick to him is being able to those quick, convulsive moments,” Reitman also said. “Matt was able to do that right from the get-go. That, more than anything, gave us confidence.”
Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase
“There had to be a couple hundred Chevys that we looked at,” Papsidera recalled.
After auditioning actors using skits from the first episode of “SNL,” Reitman realized, “We’re not looking at what the end product is. What we want is the essence of the beginning, so we pivoted.”
Enter Cory Michael Smith from films like “May December” and “Gotham.” “Cory did the scene great and Cory had the voice down, but he also did an amazing fall right at the beginning of his audition,” Reitman recalled. “He did this thing where he stumbled into a trash can.”
“I loved him as a kid,” Smith has said of Chase.” There were certain actors that were goofballs. I spent hundreds of hours watching his material and really wanted to make Chevy feel real to people that know him and have seen him for so many years.”
Kim Matula as Jane Curtin
“I did no research,” said Kim Matula of her preparation for playing Jane Curtin, before hedging, “I did a little bit of research, but I have been pretty familiar with Jane Curtin already.”
“‘SNL’ was such a big part of my household growing up,” she added. “So I knew immediately I was like, I know how Jane delivers this.”
For Reitman, Matula had a similar essence to Curtin, owing to her beauty and wit. “If you’re a beautiful woman, often a sense of humor is considered a vestigial limb,” Reitman said, comparing the two actresses.
“What made Jane so brilliant on SNL, is she could slip into these Colgate commercials perfectly, except she would do it 2 percent off, and all of a sudden it was brilliantly funny. Kim had the same thing. You look at Kim and go: I see who you’ve been cast for the last 15 years, and now you get to have fun with it.”
Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner
“Who thought Gilda would be a British actress that starred in Dickinson?” Papsidera quipped to THR. Not Ella Hunt. She thought there was no point auditioning for the role. But her agent dared her, so she did. And she booked it. “She and Cory both noted that they were surprised because they were both dramatic actors,” Reitman said. “They both came in thinking that their funny friends were gonna get it.”
But Hunt was able to execute Radner’s distinct voice brilliantly, according to Reitman. “She was also able to improvise within the voice, which is really impressive,” he revealed.
Once she landed the part, Hunt began her prep. “I had the best few days watching videos of Gilda,” she said in a promo video posted on TikTok.
For Hunt, one of the most important parts of getting into character was the wig she wore to recreate Radner’s distinct hairdo.
“When [hair department head] Janine [Thompson first put this wig on my head, I was so excited,” Hunt recalled. “I think maybe I cried. I thought so much about Gilda’s hair. Gilda’s hair is so iconic that it was something I’d really obsessed about. And the minute she put this wig on me, I felt like Gilda.”
Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd
Casting Dan Aykroyd proved a challenge for Reitman, given that he had grown up knowing the actor. Reitman’s father, Ivan Reitman, directed Aykroyd in the original “Ghostbusters” movie.
Papsidera explained, “Jason knew tiny minutia about Dan, having spent so much time with him. It was trying to fill the personal side of what Jason knows about Dan as a human.”
But beyond getting the human qualities and the mimetic bits — the voice, the humor, etc. — the actor playing Aykroyd needed to embody the star’s “very unique sex appeal.”
“I was talking to Dan’s daughters, and we were joking, actually, about the amount of women that Dan slept with at ‘SNL,’” Reitman recalled of the casting process. Though not familiar with O’Brien’s credits — “Teen Wolf,” the “Maze Runner” movies, to name some of the more popular items on his CV — he saw in the charisma he was looking for. Or rather, he saw that other people saw it. “I could tell by the women in [casting director John Papsidera’s] office that there was an appreciation of Dylan O’Brien.”
“Apparently he was quite the lady’s guy,” O’Brien acknowledged. “It’s nice to be playing that energy and a lot of flirting.”
As for his prep work, he explained, “I watched some old SNL and I watched any Dan interviews that I could just try to see what I could latch on to. He’s a very specific cadence and he’s very articulate. It was just things like that that I was absorbing.”
Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman
The youngest of the seven cast members, Laraine Newman had a lot on her plate when she joined “SNL.” “Jason [Reitman] gave me the real Lorraine’s number,” actress Emily Fairn said. “She was like, ‘You can listen to my memoir if you want, but it’s nine hours long if you can be bothered.’ I was like, ‘You’re so cool.’”
“She’s got some really interesting Lorraine energy,” Reitman said of Fairn, whom he met through actor Lucas Hedges. Reitman directed Hedges in “Labor Day,” and Hedges was starring with Fairn in “Brokeback Mountain” on London’s West End when Reitman was looking for his “Saturday Night” cast.
“I realized how many similarities there were between us,” Fairn added. “She said on her first date with her boyfriend that she was laughing so hard that she peed her pants. It’s so funny because on my first date with my boyfriend, I threw up, so I texted the real Lorraine that, and she said, ‘Well you got me beat, honey.’”
Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris
Garret Morris, the only Black performer among the original “SNL” bunch, who also happened to be older than his cohorts, was the first character Reitman cast.
Lamorne Morris — no relation — made a name for himself on the popular sitcom, “New Girl,” and his experience on that show was something he and Reitman discussed when working on “Saturday Night.” Those conversations were “really interesting and really informative,” Reitman said. “The fact that he kind of came into that cast as the only Black actor. We would talk about his experience there, and what it was like for Garrett coming into ‘Saturday Night Live.’”
“I did a lot of research to embody Gary diving into all his interviews, his musical performances,” Lamorne revealed.
“There are a lot of ‘isms’ that Garrett has. He moves his hips a lot, moves his neck a lot. Says ‘mhmm’ a lot.”
He continued, “I’m glad I met him and tried to get a really good sense of what was going through his mind during these moments. He feels like a fish out of water.”
Nicholas Braun as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman
Braun was first cast as “Muppets” creator Jim Henson and ended up pulling double duty on “Saturday Night” after Reitman asked him also to play the role of legendary comedian Andy Kaufman.
“About three weeks before the film started shooting, Jason hit me up and he’s like, ‘What do you think about playing Andy?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll switch. That sounds fun.’ And he’s like, ‘No, I want you to play both.’”
Braun’s reaction? “Let’s do it.”
Kaufman was supposed to be played by Benny Safdie. But the actor had to drop out when his wrestling movie “The Smashing Machine” starring Dwayne Johnson got the green light.
Doing both roles “scared the s–t out of him,” Reitman recalled. But he did it, nonetheless.
As for portraying Henson, the “Succession” star said, “It’s really fun trying to get that voice right.
You try to get into the way that he interacts with other people, not often having real conversations with people. He’s kind of in his own world. I just wanted to get it right.”
