George Carlin’s 'Saturday Night' Actor Revealed To His Own Daughter By Kumail Nanjiani
George Carlin’s 'Saturday Night' Actor Revealed To His Own Daughter By Kumail Nanjiani
If I had a nickel for every story I got out of a Kumail Nanjiani Twitter interaction, I would probably ask for more than a nickel
If I had a nickel for every story I got out of a Kumail Nanjiani Twitter interaction, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but he only has 398 total tweets up right now (including retweets). Definitely low for Twitter. On Tuesday, a release date for Jason Reitman and Sony Pictures’s film which had been named Saturday Night after working under SNL 1975 since it was at least announced in May 2023, had finally been given. From January to March 2024, batches and batches of cast members were announced in trios, quartets, and even a quintet. From cast to writers to musical guests to executives, all the way down to an NBC page, it would seem everyone was covered. Except anyone who knew anything about that first episode of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975 knew there was one major glaring oversight: the actor who played the host, comedian George Carlin, had yet to be reported, and his family noticed.
Early Wednesday, Carlin’s daughter, Kelly Carlin, quote-tweeted Variety’s coverage. She tweeted “I find it so strange that this film is about the first taping of SNL and the host that night isn’t in the film. I know he was doing a lot of blow that week, but I do know he showed up to the taping!” She claims no one has contacted her, it’s unclear if the production actually needed to, and I’m not here to investigate applicable likeness rights. Admittedly, she seems to be coming at it from a mindset of “Well he hasn’t been reported to be in it, therefore he isn’t in it.” which would never necessarily be true and certainly isn’t here. Comedian and The Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore called the circumstances “crazy”. She’s also rather reliant on the Internet Movie Database, which was a little odd considering it’s user-edited and would at least have the standard to not add anyone especially in these circumstances without some sort of proof, but again, it hasn’t been reported yet.
So where did she end up getting her answer? Actor Kumail Nanjiani, from Silicon Valley, Welcome to Chippendales, The Big Sick, and Eternals, most recently seen in Migration and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. The latter was made by the same Reitman-Kenan team that is making Saturday Night, so he probably keeps in contact with them enough to have plausibly seen the film in some fashion. He straightforwardly told her “He is in the film, played by the wonderful Matthew Rhys.” And he really has no reason to lie to her over a genuine inquiry, but she still seemed a little skeptical amongst her remaining confusion.
In Saturday Night Live’s first episode, the legendary comedian did not perform in any sketches, but he did do three rounds of standup even after the initial monologue, spread out throughout the night. The show certainly hadn’t solidified its structure yet, with two individual musical guests, Billy Preston and Janis Ian, getting two performances each, with two other guest performers, Valri Bromfield and Andy Kaufman on top of all that. The sketches that did feature the Not Ready For Primetime Players have been noted as shorter than what would come to be expected as well.
Rhys is an Emmy Award-winning actor for starring in FX’s The Americans and whose other series regular work includes Brothers & Sisters and Perry Mason, with major animation roles as Emperor Belos on The Owl House and as Riley Greene on the first season of the Gremlins animated series. His recent films include IF, Cocaine Bear, and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring as Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl, in the upcoming two-part animated Watchmen adaptation, and will star in the Golden Axe animated series coming to Comedy Central.
Saturday Night stars The Fabelmans’s Gabrielle LaBelle as series creator (and initial co-head writer) Lorne Michaels, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Jon Batiste and Naomi McPherson as Preston and Ian, and Nicholas Braun as Kaufman and Jim Henson. There’s also Tommy Dewey as other co-head writer Michael O’Donoghue, Taylor Gray and Mcabe Gregg as Al Franken and Tom Davis, Joe Chrest as Herb Sargent, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Schuster, Leander Suleiman as Anne Beatts, Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol, Andrew Barth Feldman as talent coordinator Neil Levy, Nicholas Podany as almost-onscreen but still-future cast member Billy Crystal, Willem Dafoe as executive David Tebet, Finn Wolfhard as that aforementioned NBC page, J. K. Simmons as Milton Berle, and Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin (no relation). Batiste is also scoring the film, which is set for release on October 11, 2024.
Sources: Kelly Carlin, Kumail Nanjiani