Even After Playing Young Spielberg, Gabriel LaBelle ‘Would Have Done Anything’ to Play Lorne Michaels in ‘Saturday Night’
You know what they say: Two is a trend. When most audiences first met Canadian rising star Gabriel LaBelle, it was with Steven Spielberg’s 2022 “The Fabelmans,” in which the beloved American auteur told his own semi-autobiographical origin story, with LaBelle starring as his cinematic avatar, budding filmmaker Sammy Fabelman. Kind of a crazy introduction to Hollywood, right?
But while LaBelle relished the role — and earned plenty of acclaim for it, including winning Best Young Performer at the 28th Critics’ Choice Awards and the award for Breakthrough Performance from the National Board of Review (an accolade he shared with “Till” standout Danielle Deadwyler) — he was also eager to embrace original films. That included Adam Carter Rehmeier’s well-regarded coming-of-age charmer “Snack Shack,” a ’90s-set comedy that helped scratch LaBelle’s itch to fully craft a character (and a part he won while still in production on “The Fabelmans”).
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But true stories about Hollywood giants have some sort of hold on LaBelle, so when filmmaker Jason Reitman started to tell the young actor about his plan to make a film about the making of the first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” his ears perked up. And while LaBelle tells IndieWire he initially expected to get cast in a more supporting role (like Al Franken), Reitman had a bigger idea: How about “SNL” creator (and fellow Canadian!) Lorne Michaels?
As LaBelle explained, “Who the hell in their right mind is ever going to turn down this movie?” Not LaBelle, who soon realized he would have done “anything” to play the comedic mastermind in Reitman’s frenetic, fast-paced, and slightly fictionalized “Saturday Night.” The film is now in limited release, and a very proud LaBelle is all too happy to reflect on a project that felt like Christmas, summer camp, and (yes) a giant hamster playpen, all in one.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IndieWire: What was your relationship with “Saturday Night Live” growing up?
Gabriel LaBelle: Oh, man, I totally grew up on it. We had “The Best of Chris Farley and Will Ferrell,” the VHS, and “The Best of Commercial Parodies,” and we’d watch it live every Saturday with my parents. It was totally in my household. In the fifth grade, my buddy and I would memorize and perform the Spartan Cheerleaders at recess. So it was huge.
Did you feel like you had a particular affinity with its own Canadian background?
I knew Lorne was Canadian… well, I think, really, I didn’t know who Lorne was growing up at all.
That was my next question!
Definitely like, “Hey, did you know that Shrek [Mike Myers] is Canadian?” Or, “Did you know that Elwood [Dan Aykroyd] is Canadian?” Growing up in Canada and loving movies, definitely when you find out one of your favorite actors is Canadian, there’s an extra jolt of pride of like, “Oh, we’re not just this neighbor country. We can do some cool stuff too.” It’s not just Shania Twain or Terry Fox or Wayne Gretzky, like they put in all the picture books in school.
So when did you find out about Lorne?
It would’ve been in high school. I guess I wasn’t even really aware of it, that I was doing it, but my YouTube algorithm just happened to be interviews with actors and comedians, and I’m still in that space. I just loved to learn about my favorite people. It kept coming up [in interviews], people kept talking about Lorne or the stories or how they got hired on “SNL,” or how they learned their most important lessons, or their impressions of him. So it was definitely, I think, high school-ish, maybe even the pandemic. That’s probably why I had so much time to just sit around and watch YouTube all day.
Do you know if Lorne has seen the film?
I don’t know. I think Jason is in contact with Lorne. Lorne’s been very kind and congratulatory to Jason, but I don’t know if he’s seen it. I think that, if he does see it, Jason would reach out to me and … I don’t know. But then I don’t know if Lorne were to see it, if he’d tell Jason right away.
When this role came to you, what was your research process like?
Jason was like, “You already know how to do it.” He had so much faith in us, and he didn’t want us to crowd the screen with perfect mimicry or stuff. He hired the actors and he wanted our inventions, he wanted our ideas and our natural charismatic personalities, which was kind of nuts to hear. Because you have these performances, like Rami Malek and Austin Butler, and you think, “Man, that’s what I want to do.” But he was totally like, “Guys, seriously…” He knew we were going to get the vibe and how it felt, but that’s all he wanted us to do, so he was very encouraging of us to do the research that we actually did.
I didn’t talk to Lorne, but I focused [my research] on how he got to that place in his life, how he accumulated those talented people he was going to be working alongside, and what he’d done in his professional career to get to that point of power. And then the script has it all.
Obviously, I did watch tons of interviews with him, just to get certain mannerisms down, and his posture and the way he held his face and his accent and certain things. But Jason was very much like, “I want more of you in this.”
When I interviewed Jason, I asked him what he wanted from the real people who were there, and he said he just wanted their memories. He didn’t want a calendar. He didn’t want a checklist. He wanted more of an essence, not just mimicry.
In one of the books, I think it’s the oral history of “Saturday Night Live,” where you have all these people from the early years, you have their transcripts telling stories of how the first show got made and then the first five years, and then how the show went on from there with the different people involved. I only focused on how the show got made in the first season. But all of those stories that you see in the film, all of those arcs, every single thing that happens in almost every scene really happened, just throughout the span of those first five years. But it all happened, and it is all truth, just distorted and put into a structure of a 90-minute film.
For most audience members, you’re best known for playing two, not even just real people, but two titans of entertainment. When you got offered this role, were you thinking, “Oh, man, I just did Sammy Fabelman. Like, I’ve just been Steven. Now I’ve got to be Lorne?”
[Laughs] It’s so weird. It’s so weird. I didn’t expect this at all. I loved my experience on “Snack Shack,” getting to create this original character that I knew that only I could do. I had a lot of true-story scripts of people come my way that I didn’t want to do, because there is a rubric of rightness that you have to do, in playing a real person. You have to get their mannerisms, their speech, their walk, and their emotional stories. It’s more of a role that you have to sink into rather than having a boundless sea of invention. I was kind of looking forward to more of those, but who the hell in their right mind is ever going to turn down this movie?
This came along, and I was like, “I would do anything for this.” I met Jason and he originally kind of told me about it as, “Yeah, I’m just kind of looking for young actors, getting the vibe of who to cast.” He didn’t tell me he was thinking of me for Lorne. This was months before the casting process began, and I was thinking that I was going to be some writer, like Al Franken. I did research on who the people were in the building at that time, and I was like, “Yeah, I’m probably going to be Al Franken, in the corner or something.” But no, he had Lorne in mind for me, and I was so enamored by this script. I was like, “Oh, this is the thing to do.”
The film is so enjoyable to watch, but for the first 20 or so minutes, I was so tense, having to settle into this world. That freneticism is so much a part of this story and what makes the film work, but what’s that like on a day-to-day basis when you’re shooting it?
It’s so funny, because that was not the vibe of this set at all. Jason is the chillest, calmest, most kindest, just happy-to-be-there guy. We had 10-hour days, and so we left at 6:30 p.m. every day. Everything was pre-choreographed by the time we got there. All we had to do was re-hit our marks. All the cast just got along so well. Everyone was joking with each other, everyone was having a blast. It didn’t feel like that at all.
But so much of that tension is from Jon Batiste’s score, which was also brilliant. He knocked that out of the park. So we didn’t have that… actually, you know what? No, we did, because Jon, when he was playing Billy Preston, in between setups, he would play. He and his band would play live music, and so we would be treated to Jon Batiste and his band playing live music as the day goes on. For the whole day, they’d just be jamming. So the vibes were a-flowing on this set. It was just the most fun so many of us have ever had.
What was the first day on set for you like? I’ve been told the set is a spot-on recreation of what the actual “Saturday Night Live” set and offices look like.
There’s a video that Ella Hunt sent me of her, Jason, and I walking into Lorne’s office [on the set] for the first time, as it was being built, and I look like a six-year-old boy walking into a giant Christmas present. It’s a playground.
I never had this in my own house, but every once in a while, you know how you go over to a friend’s house whose older brother had just a giant hamster cage with tubes going everywhere, and it looks like this super-fun thing? I was always weirdly jealous of the hamster, to get to play around in that thing. And it felt like that, because every room, every compartment was something really colorful and perfectly designed, and we shot every single corner of that thing. We lived there for two months, so it really felt like this summer camp.
Have you been to the real “Saturday Night Live” stage yet?
I have, actually. Our first two days of shooting were in New York, just to shoot outside of 30 Rock, and Lorne was super cool and invited us to watch the Josh Brolin episode live. And so a handful of us, those who live in New York and then those who were just in New York to shoot regardless, we were able to go and check it out. It was really great.
Lorne was there, and I actually got to speak with him briefly after the show. We didn’t say too much to each other. But Jason was there. Peter Rice, our producer, was there. And Scarlett Johansson, who just did the cold open, was there. [Laughs] And I let them all have a conversation, and I didn’t really need to contribute too much.
Rosie Shuster and Laraine Newman, they’re the only two people I’ve met who were actually there and involved with the show, and the one thing that they both said was how Jason nailed how it felt to be there. I think that’s just so brilliant.
What’s next?
I can’t say what I am officially doing next, as of yet. But generally I am just excited to be on as many movie sets as I can be on, and just play as many different characters and be as big or as small or as outrageous. I’m just excited for what’s out there.
I think film is in an amazing place right now, and there’s so many brilliant people coming up, and amazing films and series these days, and it’s just kind of exciting. So whether I’m a cowboy or an ape in the “Planet of the Apes” series, I aim to just make as much original stuff as I can.
A Sony release, “Saturday Night” is now in limited release and will expand on Friday, October 11.
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