Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Live origin story casts its Lorne Michaels
Gabriel LaBelle will play Lorne Michaels alongside Cooper Hoffman and Rachel Sennott in SNL 1975
Aux News Saturday Night Live
Lorne Michaels has cast almost 200 comedians to grace the hallowed stage of studio 8H over the years, but now, someone has been cast to play him. Per Deadline, Gabriel LaBelle—the breakout star of Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film, The Fabelmans—will portray the legendary Saturday Night Live creator in Jason Reitman’s upcoming film, SNL 1975.
SNL 1975 isn’t a Michaels biopic but rather an origin story of Saturday Night Live as a whole. Based on an extensive series of interviews Reitman and his co-writer Gil Kenan conducted with all the remaining living members of the cast, crew, and writers room, the film will tell the story of the immortal sketch show’s first ever episode on October 11, 1975—from its conception to the precious minutes leading up to Chevy Chase’s inaugural “live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
LaBelle will be joined on the Rockefeller Center set by Cooper Hoffman and Rachel Sennott, who are playing Dick Ebersol and Rosie Shuster respectively. For anyone who may not be as hardcore of an SNL-head as Reitman and Kenan are, Ebersol was NBC’s Vice President of Late Night Programming, who (along with the company’s then-president Herbert Schlosser) hired Lorne Michaels and eventually greenlit his idea for a sketch-comedy variety show. Rose Shuster was a writer on the show who was married to Michaels from 1971 to 1980. She also dated Dan Akroyd around the same time.
“There was a long incubation period where everybody was kind of falling in love with each other and cracking each other up, trying to find their place, have a voice,” Shuster said of the show’s early days in a 2018 interview with The Neighborhood News Online. “We were stockpiling a lot of commercial parodies. You could feel something organically happening amongst us.”
Hoffman is known for his leading role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza as well as his role in Ethan Hawke’s Toronto-debuting Wildcat, while Sennott has starred in films like Bottoms, Bodies Bodies Bodies, and Shiva Baby in recent years. Going against the trend of many other recent projects (cough, cough, Euphoria), LaBelle and Hoffman are actually significantly younger than the real-life characters they are playing. Lorne Michaels was 31 when SNL premiered, but LaBelle is currently only 21 years old. Similarly, Ebersol was 28 in 1975 while Hoffman is currently 20. In the opposite direction, Shuster was 25 on the night in question, while Sennott is currently 28.
24 Comments
I’m really interested to see who is going to play the cocaine dealers.
I’m interested in who is Michael O’Donoghue, the grey eminence.
The Muppets, but not the ones you think.
Oh no I’ve heard all about Gonzo’s chickens and the crazy shit they got up to back then.
This is some truly bizarre casting. What a strange idea to cast actors who are a decade too young and still look like teenagers to play two grown men in the 70s when people generally looked a lot older for their age than they do now.
All the thirty year old actors are off playing high schoolers.
Meh, they have enough salacious Neck-Beard energy to play a nerdy pervert.
I know Steve Martin didn’t first host until the second season, but they should still find an excuse for him to play himself.
Rose Shuster was a writer on the show who was married to Michaels from 1971 to 1980. She also dated Dan Akroyd around the same time.Akroyd was banging his boss’ wife?
That tracks.
I’m guessing this is just bad writing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Akroyd actually was banging his boss’s wife.Also, no mention of Rose being the daughter of a member of famed Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster (can’t remember which one)?
She dated Ackroyd when she and Michaels were separated but not officially divorced, but the relationship was over and the pressure to be cool about everything took care of the rest.
I’m more interested who they’ll cast for the the cast.
How does Jason Reitman keep getting work? Everything he has ever made sucks. Fucking no talent nepo baby.
And what about Second City? that was the real origin in the Great White North.I used to watch SCTV on the UHF snow channels (as I called them)
Gabriel LaBelle: (clears throat) Show. Shoowww. Shoooowwww. Shoow. Shoooowwwwww. Shooooowwww.
Casting Director: You’re hired.
Interesting subject and I might watch it. But can I say the show is the mostly wildly overrated piece of entertainment I can think of both in influence, prestige and longevity? It’s a much stronger case than The Simpsons for a pop culture classic that needed to be cancelled years ago because it’s no longer funny.
All I care about is who is playing Gilda Radnercould be an Oscar bait role
Well, duh:
There’s only one Lorne Michaels impression worth watching:
*Two if you count Austin Powers’ Dr. Evil!
The movie “Just Say Yes” was hit and miss, but it had a wonderful version of Lorne Michaels, as a fountain of bizarre name dropping and backhanded compliments.
“Come back here with my likeness!”
Forget the casting. The bigger story is Unnecessary “Origin Story” of SNL Being Filmed By Jason Reitman. Let the mediocrity ensue.