Saturday Night Live, the iconic satirical US late-night live sketch show has been on air since 1975, but the show almost didn’t make it to broadcast. Saturday Night, a new film written and directed by Jason Reitman, shows the behind-the-scenes chaos as the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels played by The Fabelmans Gabriel LaBelle cajoles and corrals an unruly bunch of up-and-coming comedians to get them ready to go live. We spoke with LaBelle, Rachel Sennott who plays one of SNL’s main writers, Rosie Shuster, and Dylan O’Brien who steps into Dan Aykroyd’s iconic shoes.
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Gabriel, this is not your first time playing a legend. How did the process of playing Lorne differ from playing Spielberg?
Gabriel LaBelle: Oh, that’s a good question. I think with Steven, it was very different because I’ve been working since I was 11, but I hadn’t really taken much too seriously, and that was a very big task. I’m surrounded by absolute geniuses in all departments of filmmaking. I was 18, and that was the biggest opportunity I had been given, and so I was very nervous. I didn’t have the proper gauge to know that I did a good job at the end of the day, and that really weighed on me throughout the shoot and exhausted me. But I think with Lorne, I was coming into it much older and had a lot more experience on set and personally to be able to take care of myself and chill. Also, with Steven, I was able to talk to him multiple times a week for five weeks before shooting, and I could ask him and interview him about his childhood and his parents, and he was very open to me. With Lorne, it was a very different style, and Jason and I figured it out more together. I don’t know, just different crews, different cast, I think I was a lot more comfortable in this job than I was in the previous one. I felt a lot more prepared.
Dylan, Dan is quite a laid-back character surrounded by people who are either completely chaotic or very stressed. What was it like playing the guy who gets to chill and just enjoy what is going on around him?
Dylan O’Brien: I got to just sort of float in and out and visit the planet, which was nice. I was always sort of baseline stressed off-camera that I wasn’t doing it well, but I also thought that I wasn’t, and there was no chance, so it freed me. I thought I was doomed for failure in a way that I was like, fuck it, which was a really freeing feeling.
Rachel, outside the States, the writers of SNL, particularly the women, aren’t so well known. What was it like to bring Rosie to the fore and give her credit?
Rachel Sennott: I think it was so special to get to do that. I grew up watching SNL, and I knew about it, but I didn’t really know Rosie’s story, so getting to talk to her, and I feel like she’s also someone who is calm in the storm, while he [Lorne] is freaking the fuck out. I feel like whenever something comes in, Rosie rolls with the punches, and she is so cool and smart. So, it was so awesome to get to portray her.
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Interview by Cara O’Doherty