Lamorne Morris knows Saturday Night looks messy—and he’s here for the chaos.
The actor plays Garrett Morris (no relation) in Jason Reitman’s upcoming biographical comedy thriller. The film, which will premiere at TIFF in September, captures the behind-the-scenes drama of the very first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975.
In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Morris teased the highly-anticipated film and discussed what it was like working with four-time Oscar nominee director Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) and the movie’s large ensemble cast.
“I got to say, it was chaotic,” he said. “That might’ve been intentional because it’s all one big cast—the same way it was back on opening night, where there was so much confusion of what we were doing. There was a lot of that while filming, too.”
The Fargo and New Girl star explained that filming involved a lot of “big, long shots,” which were “really difficult” to get right. “Once you’re doing take number 20, 22, 23—the pressure is on and all the actors are tightening up, ready to see who’s going to f**k up this shot after a six-minute take,” he said. “You’re like, ‘Which one of us is going to screw this up for everybody?’ [Laughs].”
“Jason created this environment where it’s like a cacophony of sound and music and people and props and movement,” he added of Reitman, who co-wrote the script with Gil Kenan. “It was like watching a master at work. It was really cool to see. He never looked stressed at all, which was crazy to me.”
Saturday Night has a stacked cast, to say the least. Aside from Morris, it stars Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Schuster, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Tommy Dewey as Michael O’Donoghue, and Nicholas Podany as Billy Crystal; Nicholas Braun doubles as both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman. Other cast members include Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Finn Wolfhard, J. K. Simmons, Billy Bryk, Joe Chrest, Taylor Gray, Mcabe Gregg, Willem Dafoe, Jon Batiste, Naomi McPherson, and Leander Suleiman.
In July, Morris teased to Deadline that the film will “blow your mind.”
“Reitman directed the hell out of this thing,” he said. “It’s a great look at day one at SNL, the ups and downs, how the show almost didn’t happen, the characters… Obviously, now, we know 50 years later what this show has become. But to see the origin of it and the actors [in] this movie will blow your mind.”
Saturday Night hits theaters on October 11, 2024.
