Jason Reitman explains why his Lorne Michaels is so young in Saturday Night

At a mere 21 years old, Gabriel LaBelle has already portrayed two titans of his industry on the screens in which they cemented their own legacies. While his 2022 character in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans was technically named Sammy, it was pretty obvious that the fictional young filmmaker was an extension of the director himself. Then this past January, it was announced that LaBelle would be playing Lorne Michaels in Saturday Night (previously titled SNL 1975), a film from director Jason Reitman about the very first episode of the iconic variety show. While Reitman clearly thought LaBelle was up to the task of being “the metronome” for the rest of his players, the announcement was initially met with a bit of skepticism. Michaels was 30 when the first episode of SNL aired—why cast someone that much younger?

In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Reitman explained that LaBelle’s youthfulness was actually an intentional choice to add to the impression that Michaels was in over his head during SNL’s chaotic beginnins. “We meet Lorne as he’s still forming,” he explained. “He is a genius, and he has a vision beyond anyone else there—and anyone his age. It’s a lot for an actor to carry.”

But while the rest of the cast got to “kind of screw around” playing the then-unknowns who would go on to become some of the world’s most celebrated comedians, don’t expect a full-blown laugh riot. Saturday Night “plays out in real time” as the seconds tick down to Chevy Chase’s (played by Cory Michael Smith) inaugural “live from New York, it’s Saturday night!” “It’s a thriller-comedy, if you can call that a genre,” Reitman explained. “I always describe this movie as a shuttle launch, and the question was, ‘Would they break orbit?’”

The man clearly loves his metaphors. Later in the interview, he also said of the film, “This is a movie where the villain is time. It’s like our Sauron. Our Darth Vader is a clock, and you feel its presence at all times.” We say this lovingly, but a director who can’t stop referencing classic films to sell his own screenplay would make a great SNL character.

Saturday Night also stars Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, Dylan O’Brien, Rachel Sennott, Nicholas Braun, Finn Wolfhard, Matthew Rhys, and many, many more. The film hits theaters October 11. You can check out some first look images over at Vanity Fair now.