This is a big year for Saturday Night Live on two fronts. Along with the monumental 50th season premiering on the 2024 TV schedule in just a couple weeks, the origins of this small screen institution will be explored in Saturday Night, which drops in theaters next month on the 2024 movies schedule. Of course, you can’t tell the story of how SNL came to be without dpeicting Lorne Michaels, who created the comedy sketch series and is still produces it to this day. While opening up about his buzzy new movie, which chronicles the night the program’s first episode aired, Saturday Night director Jason Reitman discussed what it with like working with the “genius” Michaels.
But let’s get something out of the way first: no, Lorne Michaels has not seen Saturday Night yet. Reitman addressed this in an interview with Deadline, saying:
Lorne has not seen the movie yet.
Well, at least that’s been settled. As Jason Reitman went on to say, he may never learn if Lorne Michaels sees Saturday Night given how private he is, though that’s just indicative of how forward thinking Michaels is when it comes to what he works on. The director explained:
I don’t know if he’ll ever tell me his reaction because he’s a cryptic person. Obviously, he was the first person I ever reached out to. I’ve been speaking to him throughout this process. Lorne is someone who always looks forward. I think it’s part of his genius. From moment one when he made this show, he would finish an episode, and just put it behind him, and think about what’s next. It’s the reason that someone at his age, who has been doing this show for 50 years, is constantly evolving.
After hanging around SNL for its first five years on the air, Michaels departed to pursue other professional endeavors, but he retuned in 1985 and has remained there ever since. Of course, comedy changes as the years pass, so the only way SNL could stay on as long as it has to make sure that the material also evolves with audiences. Reitman complimented Michaels for effectively handling this:
If you think about the fact that he created this show three, four times over before Lonely Island arrived, or Please Don’t Destroy shows up. He reinvents what is comedy every five to ten years and it’s because he’s never looking in the rearview mirror.
Jason Reitman capped off this segment of the interview by saying that he looks forward to the day that Lorne Michaels sees how Saturday Night turned out, although when that will be is a mystery. In his words:
We’ll all be honored when he watches it, but that will be on Lorne’s time.
Lorne Michaels is played in Saturday Night by Gabrielle LaBelle, who rose to fame in 2022 as the lead actor in Steven Spielberg’s The Fablemans. Other notable cast members include Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shutter, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase (who particularly shines in the Saturday Night trailer), Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd Emily Fair as Laraine Newman, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, among many others. In addition to his directorial duties, Jason Reitman cowrote the script with Gil Kenan.
Saturday Night begins playing on the silver screen in Los Angeles, New York City and Toronto starting on September 27, will expand to more cities the following week, then be released nationwide on October 11. Saturday Night Live Season 50 premieres on September 27, and episodes can be streamed afterwards with a Peacock subscription.