Gabriel LaBelle (left) is stepping into the shoes of fellow Canadian Lorne Michaels in Jason Reitman’s new comedy Saturday Night.Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures
Not many young actors can boast of playing one of the most influential figures in pop culture, let alone two. Yet after inhabiting the alter ego of Steven Spielberg in the director’s 2022 autobiographical drama The Fabelmans, 22-year-old Vancouver actor Gabriel LaBelle is now stepping into the shoes of fellow Canadian Lorne Michaels, mastermind of Saturday Night Live, in Jason Reitman’s new comedy Saturday Night.
The “real-time” film, which chronicles the hectic 90 minutes leading up to the series premiere of SNL on Oct. 11, 1975, finds its focus on a young Michaels as he tries to wrangle a troupe of rambunctious performers and skittish NBC executives.
The day before Reitman’s film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month, The Globe and Mail spoke with LaBelle about the challenges of going live, so to speak.
Over the course of two years, you’ve been tasked with playing two of modern entertainment’s most influential voices. Did you feel any pressure portraying these two giants of culture?
With Steven, it was so overwhelming because I hadn’t done much film work yet. I’d been working since I was 11 on stage and television, but I had never been tasked with something so rigorous or intense or emotionally draining. I put a lot of pressure on myself. But since The Fabelmans, I learned how to navigate my energy and health. I felt ready with Saturday Night to not let it become overwhelming. And the great thing about this film is that everyone in it is playing an important figure, so we could all be vulnerable with each other.
Polaroid of Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels in Columbia Pictures’s Saturday Night.Courtesy of Sony Pictures/Hopper Stone/Sony Pictures
On the subject of health, every character in this movie is putting their health last in favour of getting the show live that night. Was the process of shooting the film similar, in that pressure-cooker way?
Jason built something that was very supportive and fully realized – it was controlled chaos. He had choreographed the whole thing with background artists weeks before we got there, so he encouraged everyone to relax and have fun. It felt like just a bunch of friends making a movie.
There is a certain Canadian-ness to this project. Lorne is Canadian of course, as are you, Jason, and your co-star Finn Wolfhard. Do you feel any kind of Canadian sensibility seeped through?
With Canadians working in the States, there’s a sense of outsiderness. And the greatest comedy comes from the outsider because you need that perspective. And then throw in being Jewish as well, and it’s a unique perspective that Jason and I have talked about. It all adds up to just enough things that you don’t take yourself too seriously and you can laugh at everything going on around you.
There have been portrayals of Lorne Michaels before, but mostly in this satirical way, like Mike Myers’s Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers films. How much did you lean toward impression versus creating a character more organically?
The funny thing is that Lorne doesn’t sound like Dr. Evil at all, it’s a caricature. Everyone knows him, and wants to show admiration to him. I wanted to get his accent down and the cadence of how he spoke, but one thing that Jason and I worked together on throughout the film is that you want it to be natural. I did a lot of research, but Jason wanted us to be more ourselves than the people we were playing.
Have you spoken with Lorne about it at all?
Jason was communicating with him throughout the shoot, and they’ve known each other for 20 years. Lorne gave us his blessing, and invited us to watch a SNL taping before shooting, so I did meet him there. But I really wanted to focus on him as a young man, and not get sidetracked by any other period than 1975.
The film is about, partly, this comedy clash of different eras: We have Lorne and the gang on one side, and then Milton “Mr. Television” Berle on the other. And this story is now being made by a new generation of comedy players in the world, reinterpreted from their perspective. Did you feel any kind of generational tension working with the material?
Everyone has these stories from SNL from 1975 and what it would have been like to work in the Wild West of those days. It’s mythologized a lot, this Mount Olympus of comedy and these are the Greek gods who started it all. So when we put on our costumes and performed this play about these characters, it just felt like it was cool to explore where it all began.
Do you recall the first time that you watched SNL?
I don’t remember what episode it was, but I do remember staying up late with my parents to see it. They would be laughing at something political that I didn’t understand. It made my parents seem cooler, and I felt like, oh wow, I’m being let into the cool kids room. That moment, my parents were cool, and I was cooler getting to hang out with them.
Saturday Night opens in select cities Oct. 4.
This interview has been condensed and edited.