New ‘Saturday Night' Cast Teaser Reveals Paul Rust, Josh Brener
New ‘Saturday Night' Cast Teaser Reveals Paul Rust, Josh Brener
The casting reveals aren’t over yet! Truly chaotic
Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, about the ninety minutes leading up to the October 11, 1975 premiere of NBC’s seminal sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in the past week. It was even attended by Bill Murray. But just because it’s hitting the festival circuit doesn’t mean Sony’s spending the next 5 or 6 weeks not marketing the film. And just when you thought everyone was accounted for, they were able to pull off revealing two more names in the already loaded cast.
On Thursday, the movie’s socials captioned a post “Picture perfect chaos”, featuring a series of Polaroids for everyone already confirmed in the cast. On Twitter it’s in video form, on Facebook it’s a photo collection. It gives Nicholas Braun’s dual roles as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman not only separate space rather than together, and confirming Matthew Rhys as George Carlin. It even extended to Finn Wolfhard’s NBC page. Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris got a “No Relation” note. Still to many surprise, it included first looks at the previously unreported Paul Rust as Paul Shaffer and Josh Brener as Alan Zweibel.
Rust is probably best known for starring as Denis Cooverman in the film I Love You, Beth Cooper and as Gus on the 2016-18 Netflix series Love with Gillian Jacobs. He is a credited co-writer on Pee-wee’s Big Holiday and appeared in the film as Ernie. Nowadays he voices Ham on the Fox sitcom The Great North, which is currently finishing its fourth season and will be back for the 2024-2025 season. He had also wrote the HBO Max Christmas miniseries Santa Inc. and voiced Jeremy/Grandpa Smalls but is no longer available as it later fell to the streamer’s infamous purge. Shaffer is best known nowadays as the bandleader for David Letterman’s entire late night career across Late Night and Late Show but was in the original SNL band first, becoming a cast member in the seemingly chaotic fifth season. As the band’s pianist, he was also utilized for Murray’s Nick the Lounge Singer and to play Don Kirshner, even before becoming formal cast.
Josh Brener is best known as Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti on HBO’s Silicon Valley but has also starred in several animated series, as Donatello on Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mark Beaks on the DuckTales reboot, technician Neeku Vokto on Star Wars Resistance, Dylan Dalmatian in 101 Dalmatian Street, Twig on The Mighty Ones, and has now taken on the role of Ol’ Chum (presumably for yellow Illumination reasons formerly known as Minion) in this current phase of the Megamind franchise. He also has been quite the utility for 11 episodes of the Rugrats reboot and voiced Hailey’s spoiled and cheating-leaning rival A.C. Aychvak on Hailey’s On It!. Having co-starred on Silicon Valley with Kumail Nanjiani, who had to be the one to tell Carlin’s daughter Kelly who exactly was playing her father, Brener might have been the one who hooked Nanjiani up with the screening that made him knowledgeable of the information, if not having starred in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Zweibel was a writer for standup comedians when he was hired, stayed for the full original five seasons, returning in 1984 and 1987. He wrote the book the Rob Reiner film North was based on and subsequently wrote its screenplay. His subsequent TV work includes It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
They are part of a Saturday Night cast that includes Gabrielle LaBelle as series creator (and initial co-head writer) Lorne Michaels, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, 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 as Billy Preston and Naomi McPherson as Janis Ian. 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, J. K. Simmons as Milton Berle, and Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin.
Reitman is not only directing Saturday Night but teams again with his Ghostbusters: Afterlife co-writer (and Frozen Empire director) Gil Kenan for a script based on an extensive series of interviews they conducted with all surviving cast, writers, and crew. It is also part of their overall production deal with the studio. They produce with Jason Blumenfeld and Peter Rice, while Erica Mills and Joann Perritano are executive producers. Batiste is also scoring the film, which is set for release on October 11, 2024.
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