Cory Michael Smith has mostly played vulnerable men in dramas like 1985 And May December. He therefore had many reasons to doubt his ability to land the role of the eccentric and often boastful. Chevy Chase in Jason Reitman’s comedy Saturday eveningwhich recounts the first live show of Saturday evening live in 1975.

“I didn’t expect to be involved in this,” Smith, 37, said. THR. “The (audition) process continued and in my head I’m like, ‘There’s no way I’m the best person for this.’ »

Smith would eventually land the role, tasked with inhabiting one of the most colorful members of this kaleidoscopic inaugural class of SNL. It filled him with anxiety.

“I was both thrilled and horrified to do this because it’s an important and exciting film that appeals to multiple generations,” he says. “They care about this institution. They know these actors. And so the responsibility seemed really heavy and daunting.

Smith addressed this responsibility. For two months, he did not watch any story material that did not concern Chase and wrote down the actor’s tics and mannerisms in a spreadsheet that he would then apply to his scenes in the script. “I guess it’s like learning a language,” he says. Looking at photos of Chase and the rest of the cast and how they dressed also helped Smith prepare for the role, as did reading books about the show’s setting.

He also watched the first season of SNL again and again to learn the style and look of that era. “The mood and colors of that first season are so different from today,” he notes. “Today it’s like a really bright and shiny production. Back then, it was grays and browns and muted colors, and it was really dark, and you can really feel the way New York has changed. Reitman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gil Kenan, also suggested the actors watch certain films, including those of Fletch by director Michael Ritchie, which Smith says are great displays of natural behavior.

His preparation for playing Chase gave him the confidence to bring ideas to Reitman about his character, to which he says the director was very receptive. “I was writing jokes and improving jokes in a way that I’ve never done in my life,” says Smith, who was heavily involved in musical theater growing up in Ohio and did his Broadway debut in 2013. “The whole opening sequence where he interviews me and asks me about the set, and I say, ‘Is this a set? That wasn’t planned in a script, but it became a thing very important and an important identifier of Chevrolet and its state of mind.

When Chase, in one scene, meets with executives in the green room and performs a stand-up set, Reitman had written a few jokes as a starting point. But Smith contributed six or seven jokes of his own that day, some of which ended up making it into the final cut. “A lot of our early conversations were about how we weren’t looking for the best Chevrolet Chase imitator,” Reitman said. THR ahead of the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Each character has an essential essence that we are looking for. At Chevrolet Chase, it is the ego that must be humbled.

This humility proved to be Smith’s greatest challenge. The actor says he was very nervous for his scene with JK Simmons, who plays Milton Berle in the film. In the scene, Berle flirts with Chase’s girlfriend, played by Kaia Gerber, and is confronted by Chase, to whom Berle then tells him that he is nothing.

“I was nervous about it because it didn’t feel familiar with how we know Chevy Chase,” Smith says. “It’s easy to look back at his work and try to identify his confidence and charisma – he has a real sort of understated power and swagger about him – but it’s rare to see him humbled.” To exploit the humiliation, Smith relied on the only video he could find of Chase in a similar state of mind: the first time he appeared on Johnny Carson’s show in 1977, he was embarrassed by Carson from the start of the segment. “He’s trying to recover, but it’s so painful. This is truly one of the only times I’ve been able to find true humiliation with Chevrolet.

While Matt Wood, who plays John Belushi in the film, was “intentionally quite isolated from everyone due to the nature of his role”, Smith became friends with another co-star, Dylan O’ Brien (who actually called Smith during this interview). ). O’Brien plays Dan Aykroyd in the film.

“It was such a large cast, the likelihood of there being at least one asshole was pretty high, but everyone was so great,” Smith says. “Everyone showed up taking it very seriously and having done a lot of preparation because no one wanted to mess it up. We didn’t want to ruin our careers by failing in our tribute to our beloved actors. So there was a real spirit of trying for excellence. (Saturday evening features a roster of young talent including Gabriel LaBelle, Ella Hunt, Rachel Sennott, Lamorne Morris and Nicholas Braun.)

Smith, whose film credits include Carole And First man and TV credits include Transatlantic And Olive Kitteridgehas just finished filming Joachim Trier’s international drama Sentimental value alongside Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Stellan Skarsgard and Elle Fanning. But he hopes to do more comedy. “I feel like I tasted that,” he said.

He said he also learned the importance of studying the tapes. “When I created characters in the past, I may have drawn inspiration from people in my past to give them a certain quality, but I never sat down and watched other performances to develop mine. I enjoyed doing it here, and I think in the future I might draw inspiration from very specific people and performances.

This story first appeared in a November standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.