The SNL origin story Saturday Night is lightning in a bottle filmmaking, and Gabriel LaBelle was all in from the get-go. He plays the iconic TV show's legendary creator and producer, Lorne Michaels, in the biographical comedy-drama co-written and directed by Jason Reitman, who was a guest writer on the late-night sketch show.
"It felt right because you knew he was the ideal person to make this film," LaBelle enthuses. "You knew that it only came out of love, and he just wanted to tell the story, nothing more than that. It was just very genuine and loving, and you could feel it. You were encouraged by it."
Saturday Night takes place in the 90-minute run up to 11:30 pm on Saturday, October 11, 1975, when the very first episode aired live on NBC. After it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Saturday Night has a limited theatrical run but gets to enjoy a wide release from Friday, October 11, 2024. Saturday Night is not available on Digital or streaming platforms.
The yin to LaBelle's yang as Michaels in Saturday Night's ensemble cast is Cooper Hoffman, who plays Dick Ebersol, a network executive who was in charge of late-night programming when the show started. The two actors are close in real life, and LaBelle believes the pair playing opposite each other was meant to be.
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"I love Cooper Hoffman. I know he's working and busy, and he's killing it right now, but in Toronto, it felt weird not to have him there because most of my stuff was with him," the actor explains. "He was so brilliant and inspiring to work with. I've known him for a few years, and we auditioned for this together in New York. I did my audition, and he was originally auditioning for the role of John Belushi. As I'm finishing up, Jason goes, 'Hold on. Can you wait five minutes? Someone else is going to come and read.' I see Cooper in the waiting room. We hug, catch up, Cooper goes in to tape, and when they're done, Jason walks out and asks, 'Can you guys cold read this scene together?' asking Cooper to read for a different character."
"I had never prepared the scene; we rehearsed it twice, went in, and did what we both thought was a horrible audition, but Jason responded so well to it. It was just really fun. We were some of the youngest cast members and were playing real people who knew each other, so we could develop it. We'd go over our notes and get on the same track from scene to scene, and it was a beautiful collaboration. I had so much fun working with Cooper, and I hope to work with him again 1000 times. I really do."
LaBelle Has Felt A Deep Connection To 'SNL' For Years
LaBelle, who has previously garnered acclaim for playing a version of Steven Spielberg in The Fabelmans, took the job of playing Michaels, a titan of TV and film, exceptionally seriously and did his research.
"I watched the whole first season just to get an idea of the style of comedy, who the guest hosts were, and what would have been in their heads on that first night," he recalls. "I read a lot of books about how Lorne got to know everyone, formed the show, and what his earlier career was like to understand how these relationships developed. You could see how they started, so I just focused on those, on that time with that cast and crew only."
Comedy has been in LaBelle's blood since he was young, and he's very familiar with the work of many people who have passed through the halls of SNL. The actor credits his parents with getting him up to speed from an early age.
"They were brilliant in showing me the movies that they loved, and comedies especially, so I grew up on the National Lampoon films and all of those classic Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi movies," he explains. "They also schooled me in Mike Myers, Chris Farley, and Will Ferrell's early work. They wanted me to know that stuff, so it was introduced to me, and I got familiar with them early on." By the way, his favorite movie based on an SNL sketch is Wayne's World, but his favorite comedy starring the show's alums, namely Farley and David Spade, is Tommy Boy.
While the real-time countdown isn't spot on, Saturday Night recreates the 90-minute run-up to the first live show in only a slightly more generous 108 minutes. LaBelle sculpted his performance in the image of that time frame and the adrenaline-fueled countdown everyone involved would have been experiencing. Every movie has to have a villain, and in Saturday Night, the nemesis is the clock.
"We broke up the film into sections. It's 90 minutes, so effectively three acts," the actor explains. "I broke Lorne up into six chunks of time, and you know you want to tell your character's story. It would be based on what time it was, and I thought that it was really fun. Watching the film for the first time and seeing the clock counting down was really fun for me because I could see that it would be 11 pm or something, and I'm like, 'Oh, great, we have 30 minutes left of this because I'm having so much fun and I want to stay in it.'
The set where the majority of the action takes place is a meticulous recreation of 8H, where the first Saturday Night show was broadcast out of.
"It was really cool," LaBelle recalls. "It was a jungle gym, and we could just hang out. We were all in the same space every day. It really did feel like we were making theater or something. That was our set, and that was our home. I would do prep in Lorne's office, the actual set that had been recreated. I'd tell people, 'Alright, I'm going to my office.' Who the f**k would ever say that? That was fun."
He adds, "I spent a lot of time on set watching the other actors. I wanted to consume as much of this movie as I could because it's just so fun. I'm the biggest fan of all the actors involved. I wanted to see their work firsthand because every day was different. You were never going to see it again. I also want to cheer on my friends."
LaBelle Did Everything He Could To Ensure He Wasn’t A Weak Link
LaBelle leads Saturday Night's ensemble cast, which includes Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Dylan O'Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, and Nicholas Braun as both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson.
On set is where LaBelle, who is also known for Snack Shack and The Predator, feels most at home.
"I think the happiest I am as a person is when I'm on set. Working on a film is, weirdly, the perfect fit for my personality," he reveals. "I love to be lazy, so I love taking time off, but I need a condensed rubric of pressured space to perform, blow off steam, and just be a goofball. I love that environment, and I want as much of it as I can. I want to learn from people like Jason, who've been doing it for longer than I have been alive because they know better than I do. We should listen to them, trust them, and learn."
At the forefront of his mind throughout the shoot was not being the loose link in the chain and letting his co-stars down. A great example of that was with the 'oner' early in the film—that continuous shot travels through the studio and corridors, introducing the chaos and cast of characters to the audience as if they were a fly on the wall.
"In that sequence, everyone was on their A-game," LaBelle says enthusiastically. "What was so great about that was because we were all in the same set, and everything was already lit and built, and they were editing as we were shooting, so we never had to really reshoot anything. We could go back a week later if it didn't work. We shot the one at the beginning of our schedule, and then about a month later, Jason was like, 'You know what? I can make it better.' We rechoreographed, rehearsed, and reshot it, and everyone was dialed in."
"There would be a moment where the camera moves away from you, and you have to get into your mark, be on your cue, on that time, and you'd see the actors who were on screen just kill and be so funny, so good, and you're like, 'I can't ruin that for them. That's their character's introduction. That was amazing. I have to honor that and be as good so that doesn't end up on the cutting room floor.' I commend Jason so much for what he did there."
Doing the festival circuit and the film's staggered release schedule has given LaBelle a gift he'd been deprived of until now: watching Saturday Night with an audience. It's also the first time he's seen the finished product.
"I first watched it about a month ago with Rachel Sennott, who plays Rosie Shuster. We saw it together in the Sony editing room, which was so joyous for us," he concludes. "However, it was before it was totally sound mixed and colored, and we've since reshot one scene and added a couple of lines to something. It frees you up that people have responded to it like they have in Telluride and other screenings, so Jason's been great at relaying all the positivity around it. We're excited because even without all of that, regardless of how it played and in theaters, having watched it, I know it's a great movie, and I'm really proud of that."