It’s been a couple years now since Gabriel LaBelle made his starring-role debut in Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and five Golden Globes, winning two of the latter. Delicately poised between frustrated adolescence and ambitious, champing-at-the-bit young adulthood, it was a performance that marked LaBelle as an emerging talent to watch.
Still only 22 years old, the Canadian-born actor (who has also been seen onscreen as the young version of Jon Bernthal’s character in Showtime’s neo-noir crime drama American Gigolo) gives an anchoring performance in this fall’s Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s recently released comedy-drama about the chaotic staging of the iconic sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live’s first episode, on October 11, 1975.
While actors like Dylan O’Brien, Cory Michael Smith, Matt Wood, Matthew Rhys and Nicholas Podany, among others, portray now-legendary comedians like Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, George Carlin and Billy Crystal, LaBelle is tasked with a different challenge. He stars as Lorne Michaels — the young producer trying to oversee and manage all these jostling egos, and fashion their individual talents and anarchic spirits into something never quite seen at the time on American television.
Recently, LaBelle was kind enough to chat with Brent Simon about his work with Reitman on Saturday Night, breathing life into a known (if not very public) figure like Michaels, his relationship with the audition process, and what’s next for him. The conversation is excerpted below:
Question: First off, it’s a stock question, but how did the project first come your way? Was it a full script you were sent, or was it more of a conversation with Jason?
Gabriel LaBelle: It was a conversation with Jason in January of 2023. We just met in London. He was at The Fablemans premiere and wanted to get coffee the next day. And we just kind of hung out, and then he told me what he was working on next. He told me it was a show about SNL (Saturday Night Live), but he was just trying to meet young actors, and I felt like, “Okay, I’ll never see him again.” (laughs) And then it wasn’t until June that I was asked to audition for Lorne, of all characters, because I didn’t know — I didn’t anticipate that it’d be Lorne, I didn’t make that connection at all. So I flew to New York and auditioned and crashed on my cousin’s couch, and then got the part a couple days later.
Question: You know, the story itself the movie tells has this cultural weight, it’s about SNL’s launch. But so much of Saturday Night, and the success of the film, is this propulsive energy that carries throughout. And so I’m wondering maybe how Jason described that tone, and then also if the fact that the movie is this kinetic beast, if that changed your process at all as an actor?
Gabriel LaBelle: It actually did. That’s a great question, because how I had been working before that was just trying to be as precise as possible, and very controlling over my own performance and doing a lot of the same thing every time — just making sure that I show up and do what I have planned. But what I noticed is because there’s so many moving parts and Lorne I think only has like one moment to, you know, rest — he’s so just juggling all of these things in front of him, around him, and all these people — is that I became a little rigid, just in the sense that I wasn’t as present as I needed to be. And Jason and I had that conversation about two weeks in. So I stopped prepping for what I was going to do the next day. I stopped prepping for the entire week ahead on the weekend, you know? I rested and I got my sleep and I showed up spry and ready to go, and I was able to really be present and surrender to the film and surrender to the environment. And it was the first time I actually understood the term “let it go” as an actor. I was like, “Oh right, I’ve done a year of prep, I’m here, I have it down — I can just kind of let go.” And I’m so grateful for that experience, because I think I’m going to take that lesson with me for a long time.
Question: You know, Lorne is a public figure, but he’s not an onscreen performer who has a public persona like Chevy Chase or Jim Belushi. So you’re not mimicking a widely known voice or mannerisms. What elements of Lorne Michaels did you most connect to his essence, and plug into your performance?
Gabriel LaBelle: I think there were a lot of photos that I saw of him from Edie Baskin’s collection, who was the (SNL) set photographer from the 1970s — just a lot of facial mannerisms and his posture, I could see how he stood, how his clothes fit him. And there were certain interviews or expressions where, like, you see his Toronto accent and certain intonations and attitudes that he has. But I just got a sense of what he was like physically, and I didn’t want that to be the focus. For people who don’t know him, I didn’t really want them to notice that. But for people who did, I wanted to be consistent enough that they might feel him, they might feel the man that they knew in the movie. That was important to me, because so many people from SNL inspired me to do this, whether it was their films or their work on the show. And I wanted to do right by them, because Lorne was an important figure in their lives. So his voice and just how he appeared physically was important.
Question: Lorne has this confidence, and almost vision over visibility, right? He can see what he wants this show to be, even if he can’t fully articulate it. Does that connect with anything you have had or experienced in real life, where you just feel the surge of certainty about something you want to do or how you want to proceed, and other people maybe don’t necessarily get it?
Gabriel LaBelle: Oh yeah. I mean, with Lorne, he struggles to articulate the vision up until the final moment of the film. And I think it’s less of a vision to him, but more of a feeling of an intuition — how he wants to feel when he watches the show. And that gives context to the generation — of this being born (out of) Woodstock and the Beatles and the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. You have all of this massive change in culture, but it isn’t being translated to television yet. In terms of comedy, the new revolutionary stuff is happening out in clubs, with improv and stand-up comedy, and it’s not on TV. And he wants to capture that — what it felt like to be of that generation on TV, and he wanted to put it in one place. He just knew the ingredients, he knew the kind of artists he needed, he knew the vibe. And I think that’s such a testament to the artist’s experience, where you’re leading through intuition and you’re leading with how you want this piece to make you feel, and how you want this script to resonate. As an actor, it’s like, “What am I supposed to convey to the audience in this shot? I can’t articulate the actual mental tools that go into my psychology to manipulate my own emotions, but I know how it’s supposed to make the audience feel.” It’s the same thing with the director or a photographer — I can’t explain to you why this light or this angle makes you feel this way, but it just kind of does. And I think that was something I connected with Lorne as an artist, of just kind of leading with that — leading with your heart when everyone’s telling you, “No, I can’t see it.” He was like, “I know it’s there, and I know it’ll work. Just please give me the opportunity to get everything and gather all the tools I need to do it and to show you. Because then you’ll feel it.”
Question: What were your first impressions of Jason when you met with him, and how did that align and/or maybe differed from the actual working experience? In other words, was there anything that, working with him, changed your perception of him or you were surprised about?
Gabriel LaBelle: I’ve just only respected Jason even more after every single encounter I’ve ever had with him. I always thought he was a really nice guy, a really genuine guy, which I responded to when I first met him. But then I just believed in him more as an artist every step of the way, and being on set he was just always right. He always knew what the show needed to be, what the film needed to be, and I just tried to be in service of that to him.
Question: You mentioned the SNL universe, if you will, and the movies of SNL alums and what they have meant to you. After 50 years, I think every generation now has their own different entry point with the show and certain cast members. For you, what was your first connection with either SNL and/or some of those movies from cast members that meant a lot to you?
Gabriel LaBelle: I mean, I grew up on the best of Will Ferrell, the best of Chris Farley, the best of the commercial parodies. I watched the show when it was on every Saturday, and I watched Eddie Murphy films, Chris Farley films and Chevy Chase films and the National Lampoon stuff, and Mike Myers, Bill Hader, Adam McKay, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler. I totally, totally just ate all their stuff up, and I didn’t even realize that they all came from SNL until later in life — I just knew that these were my favorite people, and so it’s always been very present for me.
Question: If you’ll indulge a bit of a random question, every actor has a unique relationship with the audition process, which is of course totally different than getting the job and giving a performance. Have you reached a place of comfort, where the audition is its own separate thing and you’re divorced from the outcome of it, or is there still some trauma or angst there?
Gabriel LaBelle: (pauses, thinking) I mean, COVID changed so much. So you’re not auditioning in person much anymore, unless it’s like a director meeting, which just ups the stakes even more. And I think a lot of actors — especially young actors who are just starting out — are being robbed of performing live, and of growing up and being punctual and developing relationships with casting directors and producers, and really feeling like you’re getting better. Whereas nowadays on self-tapes, it’s like, you can do it a million times. If you have a good actor friend and they’re really there for you, you can spend three hours doing something, you know? So it’s different for everybody. And look, I understand, because it’s expensive to rent office spaces and companies really suffered during the pandemic economically, so it’s harder to do that in person. But it can be pretty devastating to a person’s attitude, just sending out tape after tape after tape and never actually getting (anything more than) a feeling that you’re just sending it out into the void. It’s too bad that that’s the way it is. I understand it, but whenever I think of the audition process, if there’s ever an opportunity to do it in person, it’s really then that I feel like a real actor, you know?
Question: Wrapping up, you’ve worked with some incredible filmmakers and already had these high profile projects at a very young age. What’s next for you?
Gabriel LaBelle: My next film (tentatively titled Dutch & Razzlekhan) is going to be written and directed by Jon Baird, and it’ll be Chloë Moretz and myself with Isabela Merced. And it’s the true story of Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein — they stole the most money that’s ever been stolen through cryptocurrency ($4.5 billion), and their sentencing is coming up here this month, actually. They were this couple who met in Silicon Valley and they ran a crazy money-laundering scheme, and the movie is about their relationship and her obsession with image and fame and being a person of notoriety. It’s an amazing script, and I can’t wait to work with Chloë and John.
